This recipe for no-bake Christmas wreath cookies has just six ingredients and can be made in 15 minutes. These cornflake wreath cookies are a festive addition to your holiday dessert table!
These amazingly delicious little cornflake cookies are dressed up for the holidays, kids and adults alike adore them!
Don’t these cheerful Christmas wreath cookies just put you in the holiday spirit?! Best of all, they’re super easy to make, you don’t even have to turn on the oven! The kids go CRAZY for these cookies, in fact, the first time I saw them was at a holiday tea at my girls’ preschool. They were enamored and we’ve been making them ever since.
How to make Christmas Wreath Cookies
You only need a handful of ingredients for these cornflake wreaths – butter, marshmallows, cornflakes, green food color, vanilla and red candies. It’s like making rice krispy treats, but with cornflakes. You can either use red hot candies or red chocolate covered candies. I used mini red M&M’s here; I bought the Christmas variety that comes in red and green and had the kids sort out all the red ones. We used the leftover green M&M’s to decorate our gingerbread houses. Or you can just snack on them of course.
While these cookies aren’t difficult to make, the “dough” is extremely sticky which can be a little tricky to shape into wreaths. After some trial and error, I found the best way to do this was to pack the cornflake mixture into a greased measuring cup, turn it out onto the cookie sheet, and then wet your fingers or coat them with cooking spray to form the hole in the middle of the wreath. You’ll want to add the red candies right away so that they adhere while the mixture is still tacky. I let my kids add the red candies while I shaped the cookies, in fact, my 5 year old did a better job than I did with the candy placement!
These Christmas wreath cookies add a fun pop of color to any holiday cookie tray. They’re fun to make and even more fun to eat!
More festive holiday recipes
Christmas Wreath Cookies Video
Christmas Wreath Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)
- 30 large marshmallows
- 6 drops green gel food coloring or 1 and 1/4 teaspoons liquid green food coloring
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 5 cups cornflakes
- 1 bottle of red hot candies or 1/2 cup red candy coated chocolates such as mini M&M's
- cooking spray
Instructions
- Line a sheet pan with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
- Place the marshmallows and butter in a large bowl. Microwave in 30 second increments until melted.
- Add the green food coloring and vanilla; stir until the marshmallow mixture is smooth.
- Add the cornflakes to the bowl and gently stir to coat the cereal evenly with the marshmallow mixture.
- Pack the mixture into a greased 1/4 cup measuring cup and turn out onto the sheet pan. Use your fingers to make a hole in the middle to form a wreath shape and decorate with red candies. It's easiest to form the wreath holes if your fingers are damp or coated in cooking spray.
- Cool completely until firm and serve.
Yes, they will absolutely turn your tongue green for a while but they’re so good, it’s more than worth it!
Great recipe! So happy to find it online! I lost my old recipe card. My mom used to make these back in the 70s & it was the job of my brother & I to place the red hots. She never formed them into wreaths so we called them “holly bunches”. I LOVE the measuring cup hack! By far the most frustrating part of making these now with my kids is that the cereal mixture wants to stick to my fingers endlessly. The measuring cup hack (especially when sprayed with nonstick cooking spray) was a HUGE game changer!
Question about the nutritional info: what is the serving size for nutritional info provided please (i.e., how many wreaths)?
It’s per cookie!
Instead of using 1/4 cup to mold them, I used a mini doughnut pan. Worked great!
Very ingenious idea! I’ve always just made “holly bunches” instead of wreaths because I didn’t want to go to the extra effort of actually forming the wreaths but I’m going to try your idea next year & see about making actual wreaths.
The recipe works up nicely. I had difficulty forming the wreaths, so what I did was dump the mix onto parchment paper, put another piece on top and rolled it out. Let it sit for 15 minutes, then cut out circles with my biscuit cutter and to cut out the center, I used a medicine cup. Thanks for the great recipe.