The kids and I love to bake during the holidays. We make mounds of mouthwatering candy, loads of Christmas cookies and other special dishes we only prepare at Christmas and Thanksgiving. This year, in addition to our traditional dishes, I decided we should have a themed holiday meal. I wanted something easy, something unique and something the kids would remember. Although my kids are fairly adventurous when it comes to food, I wanted to prepare a dish I knew they would eat. I thought about it and realized the entire family enjoyed Tyson Chicken Nuggets. However, plain nuggets didn’t seem very creative. I needed to think of a way to “jazz them up.” I thought and thought. Finally, I thought of an idea to create Holiday Chicken Nuggets.
I envisioned a Christmas tree made from chicken nuggets. I could add vegetable ornaments. The kids and I brainstormed. Even my daughter’s boyfriend, visiting us from college, got into the act. “How about using cherry tomatoes for ornaments?” he suggested. More ideas were added. We could create a stalk from a green pepper and a star from a yellow pepper to adorn the top of the tree. I hopped into the car and made a quick trip to Sam’s Club to pick up the ingredients. You can see our shopping adventures here. I had planned on buying the veggies separately but found a party platter of veggies that even included dip. The kids could have more decorations and I would save on prep time. Talk about a win-win situation.
I began by wrapping a piece of cardboard with aluminum foil. That would serve as a backdrop for the nuggets and give everyone room to be creative. It was simple to arrange the nuggets into a Christmas tree shape by layering them in a triangle. Now it was time for the fun to begin! I baked the nuggets in the oven and arranged them into a Christmas tree shape, which was a basic triangle. It took approximately 27 nuggets to make the tree.
Since we had a variety of veggies to choose from, we added a celery stalk for the trunk and added “ornaments” of cherry tomatoes and broccoli. The carrots were good for snacking while we assembled the tree.
I sliced a yellow bell pepper into strips and arranged it in a star pattern on top of the tree.
Here;s the finished product. It was delicious served with the dip. I noticed the kids ate more veggies than usual too as they pulled them off the tree. Maybe I can think of more ways to make the nuggets special for other holidays. Perhaps a wreath for New Year and a heart for Valentine’s Day?
We finished up the evening by spending an evening strolling through Downtown Chattanooga and enjoying the Christmas displays. What a fun way to create family memories.
This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study All opinions are my own.
Tasty and cute tree 😉
How super cute.. we are a chicken family and my Teen only eats the Tyson chickens, this would be soo cute.. now this is one of those “WHY didn’t I think of this?” moments.. Thanks for sharing …Love it
What a super cute idea! You are so clever 🙂
That is such an adorable idea- love it! I miss seeing the windows in Chicago, we used to do that every year when I was a child, certainly great family memories.
Now that was a really neat idea! My kids would LOVE it.
That is the cutest idea, I love it!
I love this Christmas tree, especially the little star on top. What a fun touch!
oh my goodness-what a great idea (the tree) love it!
Your tree is such a clever idea! The kids would love this.
That is so neat and looks like a lot of fun too. I love Tyson’s Chicken Nuggets! We bought one of those veggie trays from Sam’s Club for Christmas too, it was great!
adorable! my kids would have loved that. i feel like we need a christmas do-over. we had frozen pizza for dinner 🙁
Your Tyson chicken nugget Christmas tree masterpiece is adorable! I wish that I had your creativity!
Love the addition of veggies to the chicken! Plus it’s darn cute!