The holiday season is one that often involves a lot of baking and indulging in sweet treats. In honor of this, I bring you a cute, festive, tasty, and easy holiday treat that goes over well with kids and adults. These holly wreaths are a variation on the classic rice crispy treat because it's basically the same recipe only you use corn flakes instead. I honestly don't like rice crispy treats all that much, but these, I love!

Holly Wreaths
From My Mom

• 30 large marshmallows
• 1 stick butter or margarine
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon green food coloring
• 3 1/2 cups cornflakes
• red hots
  

Directions:

• In the microwave, heat the marshmallows and butter until the butter is melted. The marshmallows will puff up and then deflate so make sure it's a large bowl.
• Remove and stir butter and marshmallows together until they're smooth.
• Stir in vanilla and food coloring.
• Stir in cornflakes and mix until they're evenly covered in the green mixture
• On a baking sheet lined with wax paper or parchment, use two small spoons to drop the "dough" onto the sheet and try and make a hole in the center to form a wreath.
• Place three red hots in a triangle on one side of the wreath for the holly berries.
• It's ready to eat or let it sit out over night to make them a little less sticky.

About this recipe: first, don't stress yourself out and count out 30 marshmallows. A large bag of regular sized or mini-marshmallows will do just fine. The microwave makes this effort fast and easy. My marshmallows puffed up as they got hot in the microwave. It's actually very entertaining and something fun for the kids helping out.

Once the butter is melted, the only tool you need is a wooden spoon. Stir the marshmallow and butter together, add the vanilla and green food coloring and stir until you've got an evenly green color. Stir in the cornflakes until they're coated and most of the work is done.

Dropping out the mixture and forming it into wreath shapes is a little tricky because it is quite sticky. Your wreaths will be 2 - 3 inches in diameter and you should get 16 - 18 wreaths from one batch.

The result: a buttery, vanilla enhanced bit of crispy crunchy corn flakes. What could be bad about these? Nothing.