Christmas in July Recipes

Welcome friends! It is late July and extremely hot here in Georgia, but my mind and heart has been on Christmas! How about you? 2020 has been so topsy-turvy that I feel that if we want to celebrate Christmas in July, August or whenever….it’s 100% alright. We need a little bit of happiness, sparkle and pure Christmas joy in the world right now.

I shared a few photos and ideas last week of Christmas in July Party Foods. Today, I am giving you a little more to think about and try!

Below is a photo of my table setup with all of the Christmas in July party foods I made. In my last post, I showed you how I made the Watermelon Christmas Trees and Hawaiian Inspired Salty & Sweet Chex Mix.

Today, we’re going to focus on Santa Claus, snowballs and The Grinch! I am going to begin with these darling Strawberry Santas.

I asked my daughter, Mary, to help with the Santas because she has a much steadier hand at piping icing. She’s easily persuaded because she knows I’ll let her be a taste tester, too! We started by mixing up a delicious buttercream icing. You can use any icing you’d like as long as it is heavy enough to hold up the “hat”. The icing recipe I used is HERE. For the Santas, I made only half of the icing recipe.

I began with fresh strawberries. I tried to pick as many strawberries that were similar in size and shape.

After washing the strawberries, I sliced the stems off of each berry and made sure that they sat level. I sliced a small amount from the top to make Santa’s red hat.

We filled a gallon-sized plastic freezer bag with icing and attached an open star tip at one of the corners to make a piping bag. Mary swirled icing onto the bottom of the larger strawberry piece to give Santa a nice round face. We stuck the smaller piece of strawberry on top and dotted it with a little icing along with a few dots down the front for his coat fur. The eyes are made from black sesame seeds.

Ho! Ho! Ho!

I love these! We sat these guys simply on a glass plate that had granulated sugar and green sprinkles on it.

Next is the recipe for my favorite punch for any celebration. My aunt Brenda was a caterer and I helped her with some of the wedding receptions she catered. She always had this delicious lime punch and there were many nights I was sick from drinking too much of this.

For my Christmas in July party, I named it Grinch Punch.

This is super simple to make! All you need to do is mix a chilled 45 ounce can of pineapple juice then pour in a chilled 2 liter bottle of ginger ale and mix. Before serving, add scoops of lime sherbet on the top. The sherbet will bubble a little and add a wonderful flavor to the drink as it melts.

If you have any leftover punch, just pop it in the fridge and drink it later. This actually tastes better the next day!

See the frothy goodness at the top? Big Y-U-M.

Here’s our final Christmas in July recipe! What is Christmas without snow? Well, I thought the perfect Christmas party in July needed snow any way we could get it, so I made snowballs!

I have loved these delicious cookies for so long and look for any excuse to make them! The ingredients are simply flour, sugar, butter, salt, nuts and vanilla so you probably have everything you need in your pantry right now to make them. This recipe calls for walnuts but I use pecans most of the time. I’m from Georgia so we have plenty of delicious pecans to use!

As you can see from the photo above, I took the butter and cut it into smaller pieces and sat it at room temperature for a while to begin softening. I try to only use real butter (not margarine) and mine is always salted butter. I know a lot of bakers like only unsalted, but I buy what I like. For the record, I don’t think I qualify in any way to be called a baker…

I mixed all of the ingredients minus the nuts in a large bowl and combined until it looked like coarse meal. The mix looks loose but will stick together when pressed. I started but using a fork to combine but ended up using my hands to get it completely mixed up.

The chopped walnuts were mixed in and then I used a Affiliate links may be provided for your convenience on some products. Please see our Disclosure Policy for more information.

I lined a baking sheet with parchment paper and sat the rolled dough balls on the paper. So, if you think they look good now…just wait Your kitchen will have this wonderful smell of the cookies baking and you will begin to pace the floor waiting on your timer to go off. While they’re baking, pour powdered sugar into a large bowl. Once the cookies have finished baking and have slightly cooled, place them in batches in the powdered sugar and roll them around to get as much of a coating as you can.

Let the snowballs finish cooling on a baking rack. Go back and roll the balls a second time in the powdered sugar or lightly dust them as they sit cooling on the rack. Get as much sugar on them as you can.

So, this is my little Christmas in July table. I used a small table I already have and attached grass skirts I bought at the Dollar Tree to the bottom with Glu Dashes. I use these

Don’t forget to PIN this for later!!!

P.S. The snowball recipe is also below so you can save or print it for later!