The kids loved making this creative, kid-friendly finger food for our Halloween lunch. Best of all, they could easily do most of it all by themselves. All I did was put the caterpillars in the oven and move them onto serving trays. Thanks again for the idea, Pillsbury!
All you need to make your meatball caterpillar is a can of Pillsbury Golden Layers refrigerated flaky original biscuits (I accidentally bought the extra big ones, which worked just fine,) and a bag of frozen pre-cooked turkey meatballs, which have been thawed ahead of time. Shoestring potatoes or chow mein noodles make cute legs for your caterpillar, but we forgot to put legs on ours. You will also want to slice up pickles, carrots, olives, peppers and anything else you can think of for your kids to use as decorations.
Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Cover two cookie sheets with foil and spray them with cooking spray so your caterpillars won’t stick. I forgot to spray mine, but was able to get the meatballs off.
Have your child separate the dough into individual biscuits, and then separate each biscuit into two layers. We found that the biscuits pulled apart easily. You should now have around 20 pieces of dough. Show your child how to wrap a biscuit around each meatball and line the wrapped meatballs up on the cookie sheet in a curved line, touching to form a caterpillar shape. You will be able to make two caterpillars of around 10 meatballs each.
Now it’s time to decorate! Let your child place veggies and herbs on each meatball (or every other one to leave some plain for picky eaters.) Some of the decorations may fall off during cooking, but my kids didn’t seem to care. Put the shoestring potato legs on at this point, if you have them. Bake your creations for 13 to 16 minutes, or until the bread looks done.
Move your caterpillar onto a serving tray, if you want to. It will probably come apart, but just reassemble it on the tray. Serve with ketchup and mustard, or marinara sauce. We served baby dill pickles with our lunch and called them goblin fingers. The kids loved it.
Coming soon: Marshmallow Monsters and Yummy Hot Dog Mummies.
Creative Mama 
November 27, 2009 at 7:47 pm |
love your ideas. I should’ve taught grade school, I think, so I could use them! Maybe my drama class or creative writing could have a little fun…