Chocolate Popcorn Trees | Earth Day | Hungry Happenings (2024)

Published: Apr 14, '12 · Modified: Sep 2, '23 · By: Beth Klosterboer · Commission earned on paid or sponsored links.

Celebrate Earth Day by making Chocolate Popcorn Trees! They are easy enough to create that your kids can even help. Plus, they taste great too!

To celebrate the warm porch sitting weather and the new life of spring, I created some chocolate trees topped with white chocolate popcorn leaves.

These cute trees are made out of milk chocolate stems and green-colored white chocolate-coated popcorn. Some even are adorned with candy fruit.

They are the perfect treat to make for an Earth Day celebration, a summer party, an apple-picking party, or a garden party.

The popcorn trees lay flat and can be packaged to give as party favors. Check out my Rice Krispie Treat Apple Tree tutorial if you'd like to make a 3-D tree that actually stands up.

The tree on the Amazing Apple Cake pictured above is made of popcorn using the same technique shown in that tutorial.

Below, I will show you how to make the easy chocolate popcorn trees.

Before you beginIf you don't have much experience working with confectionery coating/candy melts, you might want to read myChocolate Making Tips.

Ingredients

melted light cocoa candy melts/confectionery coating
melted green candy melts
popped popcorn (air popped works best)
colorful candies, optional - Candy Coated Sunflower Seeds, Candy Buttons, or M&M's

The amount of each of these ingredients will depend on the size and quantity of your trees. I used 6 ounces of the light cocoa candy melts to make the trunks and branches of my 5 trees. I mixed 10 ounces of green candy melts with 6 cups of popped popcorn for the leaves.

Supplies

baking sheets
parchment or wax paper
disposable pastry bag or zip top bag

Instructions

Pipe chocolate tree trunks and branches.

Line baking sheets with parchment or wax paper. Pour melted light cocoa candy melts into a disposable pastry bag or zip-top bag.

Pipe a tree trunk with branches onto the parchment paper. My trunks were about 6 inches long by 2 inches wide with the branches coming out about 2 ½ inches from the top.

Refrigerate for 3-5 minutes, just until hardened.

Continue to pipe trees until you have the desired number of trees.

Make green-colored white chocolate popcorn.

Pour popped popcorn into a large mixing bowl.

Pour melted green candy melts over popcorn and stir and toss until well combined.

Add popcorn leaves to the tree trunk.

Immediately spoon green popcorn over the branches of your trees.

If you don't work quickly, and the popcorn hardens in the bowl, heat it in the microwave for 10 seconds, then stir. Heat more if needed.

Plain popcorn trees.

The trees look great just as they are. I set them on a sheet of paper that looked like a blue sky and added some green coconut grass.

You could make fall trees by coloring your popcorn with red, yellow, and orange candy melts.

Or you could add some candy fruit.

Adding candy apples, lemons, and oranges.

While the popcorn is still wet, add colored candy pieces to create fruit trees if desired. Refrigerate your trees for about 5 minutes until hardened.

I used yellow candy-coated sunflower seeds to make lemon trees, and jumbo candy buttons to make the apples and oranges.

You could use M&M's, Reese's Pieces, confetti decorations, or even make your own using candy melts.

Making the trees sturdier.

You can make your trees thicker by turning them over, piping chocolate on the back of the tree trunk, and adding more popcorn to the backside.

Chocolate Buckeye Tree

In 2003, I created a chocolate popcorn tree filled with teeny tiny chocolate peanut butter buckeyes. I set the tree on top of a sheet of rice krispies and surrounded it with Peeps and other edible props like a chocolate cart, a chocolate picnic blanket, chocolate ducks swimming in a candy pond, and more.

The barn, fence, and airplane were all made out of chocolate too. I won the Ohio division of the contest with this clever creation.

Related Recipes

Fudge Trees

Cookie Palm Trees

Crescent Roll Trees

Be sure to check out all of my other Earth Day recipes.

Recipe