Are you tired of making or eating another "traditional" birthday cake? There are quite a few other options for baked goodies for your kid's birthday party. All it takes is a little creativity and thinking outside the box. Here are a couple of ideas to get your creative juices flowing. Use one of these ideas or come up with your own unique creation of simple kids birthday treats.

Decorated Cookies

· Sugar Cookie Dough
· Cookie Cutters
· Wax Paper
· Confectioner’s Sugar
· Water
· Food Coloring
· Assorted candies
· Colored Sugar (different colors)
· Sprinkles

You start by either making a batch of your favorite sugar cookie dough, or got to the store and buy some refrigerated dough. Roll it out and grab some cookie cutters. Let the kids use the cookie cutters, or cut free-form shapes with a blunt butter knife. Transfer the cookie shapes to a baking sheet and bake them according to your recipe's instructions.

Take the golden brown cookies out and allow them to cool on a rack.

Mix confectioner's sugar (powdered sugar) and water to make a sticky white paste. Add food coloring for colors other then white. Let the kids use this paste to paint their cookies, then have them add sprinkles or colored sugar to decorate the cookies even more.

Allow them to dry and either let the kids eat them at the party, or place them in plastic bags so they can take them home after the party.

Magic Wand Cookies

· Refrigerated Sugar Cookie Dough
· Star Cookie Cutter
· Popsicle Stick
· Confectioners’ Sugar
· Hot Water
· Food Coloring

Roll out the sugar cookie dough and cut using a star-shaped cookie cutter; bake according to package instructions.

As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, and are still soft to the touch, carefully push a Popsicle stick between any two points of the star. This makes the handle for your wand. Let the cookies finish cooling. This will allow the wand to "stick".

Frost the cookies with glossy icing. To make glossy icing, simply sift confectioners' sugar into a bowl. Slowly add hot water, while mixing, until it becomes a smooth paste. Add a few drops of food coloring to make extra colorful treats. These wand cookies are somewhat fragile, but they're delicious and a lot of fun to eat!

Dessert Pizza

· Sugar cookie dough, store bought
· 8-ounce package cream cheese, at room temperature
· 1 cup sugar
· 1 teaspoon vanilla
· Fruit slices like banana, strawberries, apples and blueberries
· Greased cookie sheet or pizza pan

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Slice up the dough like you're making cookies.

Press the dough into a pizza pan. You should end up with thin, sweet pizza dough. Bake it for about 8 minutes and cool it on a rack.

Combine the sugar, vanilla and softened cream cheese. Use a butter knife or the back of a spoon to spread the cream cheese mixture all over the cookie. Of course you could also add some red food coloring to the mix first to make it look like tomato sauce. 

Arrange the fruit slices all over the sweet pizza dough to make it look like a traditional pizza. Of course you could get fancy and make faces, shapes etc. Just have fun with it and get the kids involved.

There you have it … Three fun baked treats that not only make a great addition to any birthday party, whether you are serving cake or not. They are also a fun activity for the kids during the party. Give one of these a try at the next child birthday party you throw.

For tips and ideas to plan the perfect birthday party visit http://www.littlegirlbirthdayparty.com  and for more kid-friendly recipes delivered to you inbox every week visit http://www.dinewithoutwhine.com/info 
 

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