This is a wildlife project you can do with kids or for an adult who just likes to make backyard bird friendly items. Fruit cups make great winter bird feeding when berries and natural fruit foods are getting scarce.

Tip: If doing this with children, just go ahead and go outside right now. It’s messy. Take the whole ball of wax outdoors unless you are trying to add that OMG element to a kitchen design.

Suet & Fruit Bird Cups

Ingredients:

1 grapefruit
Course ground cornmeal
Crunchy peanut butter (get the cheap stuff, has more oil in it)
White flour (NOT self rising!!)
Crisco

Tools:
Ribbon or wire
1 large mixing bowl
1 small mixing bowl

First you will need to mix your suet. Many people have a favorite suet recipe but I use the good old Crisco shortening method:

1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup Crisco shortening or other shortening
2 cups yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup white flour

This is simple. Take all of the above ingredients and combine them in a large mixing bowl until even. It should hold together like dryish cookie dough when it’s the right texture, usually I end up throwing in an extra dab of peanut butter to make it stick. I also always give up on mixing with a spoon and end up using my hands. I said it was messy.

This will make more than you need for this project but extra can be formed into cakes like you would a hamburger and stored in the freezer. Cakes can be placed outside in suet baskets for birds.

Set the peanut butter suet mix in the fridge until it is needed later.

Slice the grapefruit in half and scoop out the meat. Set the now empty halved grapefruit skin aside.

Cut the grapefruit meat into small pieces and place in a smaller mixing bowl. It will be fairly juicy so chill this in the freezer for about 15 minutes to firm it up.

While that firms up, take the grapefruit half skin and poke three equally spaced holes in it. Thread ribbon through the holes for hanging. Do not just put a knot on the inside of the skin as the hole tends to widen and the knot slip through. Instead thread it back and tie it to the ribbon over the lip of the grapefruit skin.

Take your suet mix from the fridge and grapefruit meat from the freezer and add an equal amount of suet mix to the grapefruit. Fold these together until well blended. Scoop the blended mix into the be-ribboned grapefruit skin bowl and hang outside for birds to enjoy!

Photo credit goes to Marcus, grade 3. He strongly advises standing on a ladder if you wish to take pictures of your mixing bowls. Apparently he advises this even if you are 6’3. One must see inside the bowl after all.

Credit for the beautiful beautyberry embellishment goes to Amy, grade 3. She advises that “well, you could probably use another kind of berry if you had to but purple looks best.” When asked what to do if you don’t have a beautyberry bush, her reply was, “Well get one.” Okay then. Thus spoke the Princess.

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