Teacher Appreciation

I decided to give the traditional teach appreciation gift a face lift.  I made apple shaped cake pops!  I made them with a lemon cake/lemon frosting mix and they turned out tasting great.  I was planning to use a spice cake to hint at the fall theme of apples, but I didn't get the mix thawed in an unexpected time crunch to get them made.

You can see I used both a red (which I created using some red and pink melts - due to lack of red) and I used a lime green and I think both shades looked good on my apples!  I also used the ends of pretzel sticks to make the stems on the top.

Cinco de Mayo pops

I had some cake just lying around so I decided to try to make some chili pepper cake pops in honor of Cinco de Mayo.  They turned out really cute, but I think next time I will choose to coat them differently.

I started after I shaped them (using my mini cookie cutters from Pampered Chef) I dipped them into the lime green color on the tops by hand.  After they rested and firmed up I dipped them into the red melts and added the stick to them.  I think in the future I will just dip the entire pop with the stick in the red candy melts and then I will go back and redip the tops in a green color.  If I had had easy access to a darker green I would have just used that, but I was using the lime green for another pop project so I added the green sanding sugar to give them some pizzazz and also to darken the color up.  They turned out great and I am so glad I made them, but have learned a little something for next time too!  Win...win in my book!

Strawberry Cookie Pizza

I bought a bunch of fresh strawberries and wanted to come up with a new way to fix them and we ended up with strawberry pizza.  It is a sugar cookie layered with some fresh strawberry puree and cream cheese, then topped with strawberry slices and tiny chocolate chips.

It tasted really yummy but it didn't last until day 2...the toppings really caused the cookie to get soft and mushy (by the 3rd day!).  Next time we will just layer the cream cheese and then add the puree over it more like tomato sauce, rather than mixing the 2 ingredients ahead of time...Reagan made comments about it looking like vomit (cracking me up!!!) even though she liked the way it tasted!

Reagan's Daisy Scout Vest

Reagan finally decided what type of uniform she wanted for her Daisy scout uniform!  She picked the vest over the smock/apron so now it is time for Mommy to decorate it up with all her insignia and patches.  Thankfully most of them are iron on, but I will be doing a little over stitching to make sure nothing comes off.



Before

Time to Dye the Eggs

I fixed up 1 dozen hard boiled eggs for the kiddos to color so they were happy that they each got 6 and there 6 colors to choose from.

At my Mom's house I fixed up one of the deviled eggs to look like a chick just hatching and it was the centerpiece of the deviled egg platter.

Easter treats

I had a great idea to make some bird nests (chocolate Rice Krispies and Fiber One cereal) with some edible Easter grass and M&Ms for our Easter trip to Jefferson City this year.  We also made up some giant Rice Krispie treat eggs that were hollow and filled with Starburst jelly beans.  The kids had fun helping and were able to help with quite a bit of the work, so Mom was happy too!

The worst part of the whole ordeal is that we forgot to take our carrier with all the treats in it, so no one actually got to enjoy them, except for us...after the fact.

PINKALICIOUS!

Reagan's Girl Scout troop had a Pinkalicious party to celebrate all things pink just like in the great books by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann.  What is more pinkalicious than teaching the girls how to decorate up some cake pops!  I made a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting mixed in for the cake balls and then had a whole slew of pink toppings for the girls to add after they finished dipping them.  It took awhile, but each girl got to fix up 2 pops and they all had a fun time!
I also made up little cupcakes and labels using my Cricut machine so the girls could decorate them and label their pops so we would know who's was who's.

I will post pictures once I get them from one of the other moms that had a camera...ours was still out of commission since I dropped and broke it at Funday :(  Thankfully Best Buy came to the rescue with our extended warranty and we got it back shortly after!

Ridgeway Cake Pops

I made 3 cakes into cake pops for Reagan's school Fun Day fundraiser.  I made a chocolate cake into blue pops, a lemon cake into yellow pops and a white cake into white pops.  The Ridgeway school colors are Blue and Gold so I wanted to have pops with lots of school spirit.

This was my first time to use sanding sugar to decorate the pops.  It turned out to be fairly easy and they look super cute!  I also found out that it doesn't take much in the way of supplies (for about 1/2 of a cake I only used about 1/3 of a large container of sanding sugar).

Some of my pops were sold in the Bake Sale/Country Store and one batch of them went into the silent auction as a sample for a winning bidder to get a 36 cake pop custom order in the near future.  I'm looking forward to see what they want and making something new!

Red, White and Blue Holiday

While making some batches of cake pops for Reagan's school Bake Sale during thier annual fundraiser, I decided to experiment with some of the leftover cake and I made 3 stars.  I then dipped them in red, white and blue colors to make them look nice and festive for the 4th of July.

I was pleased with how they turned out and I think they would be fairly simple to make with the only time consuming part being the forming of the stars (for which I used my Pampered Chef mini cookie cutter).

Heart Pops for the Girl Scouts

For the second year I made heart shaped strawberry flavored cake pops for Reagan.  This year she took them to her Feb Girl Scout meeting for snack time.

Pink Oatmeal Cookies

So I tried for the first time to make my own oatmeal cookies (with chocolate chips!).  I learned 2 things from this.  1.  I wanted to make them pink, but didn't add nearly enough red food coloring...when wanting to make pink or red, it will bake up much lighter than the batter so better to overdue than under-do it, they just didn't look right.  2. They need to be baked less than it says.  I used my new stone bar pan (from Christmas) and my trusty old pizza stone to make them and I loved the way the bottoms weren't overcooked, but they were much more crunchy than I would have liked.

St. Valentine's Strawberries

For the second year in a row we made chocolate covered strawberries, the only difference is that this year Wil got to help and not just Reagan.  The kids had a lot of fun and did a super job (only a few had chocolate leaves or were lacking good coverage).  I think we all agreed that tasting was the best part!