The holidays are here and baking is a must-do family activity, but sometimes it just needs to be easy!

Pop your apron on for some fun, shamelessly sugary creations.

The fun is in the making.  Let's face it - this is the absolute opposite of achieving perfection, it's probably not even about eating the end result -  the more slightly rubbish the better!

You know how you always remember the naff or outright disastrous creations on the Bake Off?  This is all about the way they made you smile more than the jaw-dropping achievements of the finalists (sorry Candice, Nadiya et al).  

We're all about the collapsing gingerbread wedding chapel or Andrew's inappropriate sugar lances.  Imperfection is just more fun than perfection.

Can you tell the children made these?!

Marshmallow Snowmen Kebabs

• Stick the marshmallows on a kebab skewer and decorate away.  
• If you're attempting healthy you could replace a bit of snowman with a strawberry, but really... why bother?
• You could find an edible-ink pen, but to be honest, we just used a felt-tip.
• Add a strawberry lace to make a scarf.
• A variety of facial expressions is good.

Melting Snowman Cookies

• Make your own cookies if you want but, if pressed for time, or if you have children possessed of the attention span of a slightly dense amoeba, buy some cookies or use a digestive.
• Mix up some fondant icing sugar (this only requires the tiniest amount of water), dribble a couple of spoonfulls on top of the biscuit and off you go.  
• Don't make it too runny or you'll be in a right mess and glad of your wipe-clean apron.  
• The off-the-edge puddle is part of the overall look.
• We used chocolate matchsticks as arms and halves candied cherries as hats.
• At least one grumpy-faced snowman essential (check out the snowman McGrumpy and is sidekick McNasty in the backrows of our photo.)
• Again, a felt-tip was part of our arsenal.

Christmas Cupcakes

Let your imagination run free.  Neat little baubles for tidy children.  Wonkily-smiling faces for those less concerned with precision.

Here is a great, all-in-one recipe for light-as-air cupcakes or a wonderful lemon drizzle cake. It's the addition of milk which makes this sponge so good and feathery-flyaway.

Basic All-In-One-Sponge

Ingredients

• 6oz / 170g self raising flour 
• 6oz / 170g caster sugar
• 4oz / 115g butter
• 2 eggs
• 5 tbsp milk

You can flavour with vanilla paste, lemon or orange zest if you like.

Method

1. Put everything in a food processor and blitz until mixed.
2. Pour into cake cases or a loaf tin.
3. Cook at 180ºC for about 12-15 mins for cupcakes or 35 mins for loaf cake.

Drizzle

• Add juice of 1 lemon to 3 tsp icing sugar and mix.  
• Poke holes in your loaf cake and pour slowly over.

Want more recipes for children? There's plenty more on the site.