A SAVVY mum tricked her children with a homemade McDonald’s Happy Meal – and even recreated the packaging to fool them.
Danielle Culley, 33, prepared the surprise dinner for her son, Oscar, four, and daughter Lily, six, last Wednesday after the fast-food chain closed its doors two weeks ago amid the coronavirus lockdown.
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Dishing up the Happy Meal treat, the single mum’s menu consisted of a cheeseburger, fries, Pepsi Max and chicken nuggets wrapped in super accurate McDonald’s wrapping.
The mother, who is a full-time carer for Lily, who has autism, revealed she only told her kids’ the truth once they’d been hoodwinked by the delicious fakeaway meal, which costs her only £2.15 to make.
Danielle admitted she was blown away when her youngsters said it was better than the real thing.
To make the homemade Happy Meal, the savvy saver picked up a pack of four reduced-price burgers for 65p at Asda and bought the bread buns from a corner shop.
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While the Pepsi Max, chicken nuggets and salad were things she already had in her cupboards.
The food took Danielle just over half an hour to prepare and it took her another 45 minutes to complete the packaging, meaning the whole meal was ready to be served in an hour and 20 minutes.
The Staffordshire-based mother created the chip packets by printing off McDonald’s symbols on A4 paper and sellotaping it together, while she wrapped cups in paper printed with the fast-food restaurant’s famous ‘golden arches’ logo.
However, Danielle worried she wouldn’t get the cheeseburger packaging right, which she said was the hardest element to accomplish.
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She shared: “I really had to think how to do the cheeseburger packaging because I knew my daughter, who’s autistic, would tell me if it wasn’t up to scratch.
“She said even though it wasn’t exactly the same but that it was a ‘mummy’s McDonald’s’ so she was happy.”
Danielle explained that she and the kids would go to McDonald’s weekly for a treat but after becoming a single parent last year, she o longer had the budget.
However, she said the experience was a heartwarming reminder that they could still do what they enjoyed on a budget.
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Danielle and her children have been in lockdown for four weeks after Oscars developed COVID-19 symptoms but has been given the all clear and they look forward to trying their next fakeaway – KFC.
It seems people are missing McDonald’s a great deal, but fear not as the fast-food chain recently revealed how to make the popular Big Mac from home.
Meanwhile, this mother replicated the entire McDonald’s drive-through experience for her kids.
