Gelatine Bird Treat

by Jan Clark

6 Materials

8 Hours

Easy

This is a great DIY for kids in the winter (supervised by an adult). Much less expensive than the large suet cakes - and much more fun!

This is the end result. If you like what you see, keep reading!

For part one, you're going to need some flat plastic that you want to recycle, a muffin tin, hot glue, twine or lightweight rope ( mine is 5mm), a marker and some scissors.

Start by tracing the outline of the bottom of one of the muffin forms on your recycle plastic. Cut that form out, then (pictured here) trace around it as many times as will fit on the rest of your plastic. Cut out all the circles and drop them into the muffin tin. Mine made 10.

Next, fire up your hot glue gun. While it's warming, cut out the same number of pieces of twine or rope - about the length of the whole muffin tin. Tie knots in each end. Squirt a bubble of hot glue onto the center of each bit of plastic and press an end knot into each bubble to secure it.

Now for the fun part! Every 'muffin' will take about 2 oz of seeds. If you don't want to weigh it, my 10 muffins needed about 2 cups of birdseed. (Note: if you use black sunflower seed, it will float.)

You're also going to need 2 packets of gelatine. If you want it 'stiffer', use 3. Boil 2 cups of water, sprinkle in the packets and stir until the gelatine is dissolved. (Sorry, for some reason this picture came out pixel-y for this post icon

Next, add the birdseed to the cooling gelatine. Stir it around a bit. You can grease the cups if you like for an easier release, but I don't find it makes much of a difference. Spoon or ladle the birdseed into the cups. You DO NOT need to include all the gelatine with your seed. It's just to keep it stuck together.

Now let the muffin tin set. Remember to try to keep the cording in the center of the 'muffin.' It will take about an hour. I pop my tin into the freezer for about 5 minutes and then using a spatula to loosen the edges, pop them out. You can let the unmolded 'cakes' dry overnight on a baking rack.