The month of Love is upon us and there are plenty of great Valentine inspired crafts to get you in the mood. I'm all about sharing the love with my favorite garden critters, so I decided to create heart inspired treats to give my feathered friends a free meal on me.
The birdseed cakes are super easy to make and a perfect project for kids. There is no shortage of recipes on the internet that use gelatin or lard and either will do for this project.
The recipe I used is from Lisa, a blogger at Wine and Glue:
Just mix up the ingredients and either use a cookie cutter or do what I did and use these heart shaped foils, only $1 for 24 from the Dollar store.
This recipe makes a lot of birdseed cakes, so I have several replacements on hand. What's great about the foil molds is that I didn't have to spray them with cooking oil to prevent sticking as they pop right out and they will hold their shape while being stored until they are ready to use.
I just pushed a chopstick through the middle of the cakes to create a hole as per Lisa's suggestion, then let your molds sit for about 24 hours to firm up. In the mean time, you can make your berry hearts.
American Holly tree's produce bright red berries that birds love. Bluebirds, thrushes, woodpeckers and mocking birds are attracted to these berries. You could give them an extra treat and use blueberries or raspberries instead.
I just used red florist wire because it's easy to shape into a heart and then I threaded the berries on.
Once my birdseed cakes were dry and my berry hearts were done, I tied them up with decorative ribbon onto a ring that I could hang from a tree or garden hook.
The chain of birdseed cakes and berry hearts looks adorable and judging by the birds that amassed along the fence watching me find a place to put their gourmet meal, it was clearly going to be a hit.
