Making Easter Bunny Smores

After seeing this post, I decided that O and I would make these Easter Bunny Smores as a welcome gift for my sister and niece who are visiting us during their Spring Break. O loves candy (but doesn't get much of it), so she was THRILLED! First, we put in the m & m's (we typically avoid artificial dyes, but we make exceptions, especially for holidays). O reminded me so much of myself (and my mom and sister) when she picked up a broken m & m and said "Oh, I should eat this one since it's broken!" She also really enjoyed putting the peeps into the jar, and she made sure to lick her fingers after each one. I hope Mem and M don't mind a few O germs :) We poured 1 and a 1/4 cups of m & m's into the bottom of the jar, and then put 8 peeps on top of the m & m's.








 
Hammering the graham crackers was also lots of fun! The recipe calls for a sleeve of crushed graham crackers. After they were crushed, we put them in a baggie with a 1/3 cup of brown sugar.



Here is our finished jar of Easter Bunny Smores! O was SO proud and excited to present the jar to my sister and niece when they arrrived at our house on Tuesday afternoon.




The girls and I cooked the smores this morning, and they were yummy! Luckily, both girls fit in the Kitchen Helper, which makes cooking MUCH easier! They took turns pouring the m & m's into the bowl (I switched the mixture to a mason jar since it was bigger and looked nicer. However, I still couldn't fit the baggie of graham crackers and brown sugar into the jar).



They enjoyed pulling the bunny peeps into small pieces, but I had to watch them closely because they wanted to eat any peeps that were stuck to their fingers, and they ALL stuck to their fingers!



We added a 1/2 cup (1 stick) of melted butter and a tsp of vanilla to the mixture and stirred.



I pressed the mixture into a greased 9 inch baking dish and baked it at 350 for about 15 minutes. It came out crumbly, but delicious!!!

Chocolate Playdough

I 1st saw a recipe for chocolate playdough on The Crafty Crow (I think) around Christmastime, and I knew it was something we'd have to try! I was glad for the reminder and the recipe on My Montessori Journey recently. I was also VERY glad that Guh-guh was excited to make the playdough with O. They had a great time, and since chocolate is one of O's (and Guh-guh's!) favorite things, this was the perfect activity for her (them)!

Mixing up the playdough





Spreading out the dough to make chocolate cookies. Yummy! Although O told me later that she tasted the playdough, and it REALLY wasn't yummy :)
 

Here's the recipe:
Chocolate Playdoh Recipe

Mix together:

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup cocoa

1/2 cup salt

2 tsp. cream of tartar

Make sure you combine these ingredients until they are thoroughly mixed together. Then add 1 1/2 T. cooking oil and 1 cup boiling water. Mix and knead until you have a nice smooth ball of dough.

My mom really preferred this method of making playdough over the cooking method. She said it's much easier! Thanks, Laura!

Miniature Pumpkin Pies

Guh-guh and the girls made miniature pumpkin pies yesterday afternoon for a special treat :) The girls put vanilla wafers into cupcake liners. They then mixed 1 can of pumpkin with about 4 ounces of cream cheese, a tsp of pumpkin pie spice, a half teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/2 cup of confectioner's sugar, and one egg. Guh-guh poured the mixture onto the vanilla wafers and baked them at 325 for 25 minutes. Yummy!

Homemade Salsa

IMG_1883 (Large), originally uploaded by omamom16.

I made crockpot chicken chili for supper tonight, so after her bath I talked O into helping me make the salsa. She wasn't very interested until I was pouring the ingredients into the blender. Then she was ready to join in on the fun. She does not like loud noises, so she is cringing in this picture because she knows it's going to be loud. Here's the super simple recipe for our favorite salsa:

1 28 oz can of tomatoes (whole peeled or diced)
1 1.5 oz can of diced tomatoes with chilis
1/2 vidalia onion chopped
garlic and salt to taste

pour everthing into your blender, press pulse, and you're done!

Thanks to Auntie EB for inventing this recipe so many years and bowls of salsa ago!!!

Homemade Playdough

Homemade Playdough, originally uploaded by omamom16.

O and I have been at my mom's house for the past week, so we haven't done any Montessori activities, but she has had a GREAT time playing with her cousin, M. Yesterday afternoon we decided to make homemade playdough using Laura's recipe. The girls had a fantastic time. They loved pouring in the ingredients and then mixing them with a spoon. My mom did the actual cooking of the playdough! While they played, M declared that this was "the BEST playdough ever!" I agree! The texture was perfect, and it smells so good. We added cinnamon and pumpkin pie spices to make it seasonal :) O really enjoyed making "duhkees" (cookies), and she and M both said they were making them for me to make me feel better. What sweet girls! Here is Laura's recipe (and you should check out her post because she has LOTS of good ideas for making "playdough of the month."

Homemade Playdough

1 c. flour

1/2 cup salt

1 T. cooking oil

1 T. cream of tartar

1 c. water

Food coloring of your choice

Add-ins of your choice (i.e. spices, extracts, glitter, etc.)

Stir ingredients together well. Just measure them into the saucepan you will be using to cook the dough, but mix them well before heating up the pan. Over medium heat cook the dough, stirring constantly until it forms a ball.
Let the playdough cool and then knead until it's smooth.

Thanks, Laura!

Cake in a Mug

Thanks to Laura for posting about making cake in a mug! We tried this on Sunday night for a special treat, and it was delicious. O was talking about her "pecial treat" all day. I couldn't believe how easy these were to make! Here's the recipe:

You need: a mug, 4 tbs of sugar, 4 tbs of flour (I used 3 tbs of white flour and 1 tbs of whole wheat flour. Next time I'll do 2 of each.), 2 tbs of cocoa, 3 tbs of milk, 3 tbs of oil, and an egg. Combine the dry ingredients, add the wet ingredients, and mix WELL. We didn't mix our quite well enough, and we had egg and flour streaks in our cake :) Put your mug of cake mix in the microwave, and cook it for 3 minutes. Pour it into a bowl and enjoy!

While O and I mixed up the cake, Elliott was making whipped cream to go on top. He shook and shook a jar of cream with 2 marbles, but it was still watery by the time the cake was ready. We poured it into the mini blender (that we used to make baby food when O was tiny), and it was ready in a flash :)

O had fun mixing all of the ingredients together.

Delicious, but VERY rich! Thanks, Laura for sharing this fun and yummy idea :)

Homemade Tortillas

O and I made homemade tortillas for lunch yesterday, and they were delicious! The recipe came from her Highlights High Five magazine (we LOVE this magazine!), and I adapted it a little. You need flour, salt, vegetable oil, vegetable oil spray, shredded cheese, and water.

1) Mix together 3 cups of flour (we used 2 cups of white flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour) and 1 teaspoon of salt

2) add 1 cup of water and 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil (we used olive oil, and I added a little more water since we used whole wheat flour)

3) stir until mixture forms a ball

4) make 12 balls of dough

5) flatten the dough with your hands or a rolling pin

6) spray a pan with the vegetable oil spray (we didn't have any spray, so we just used olive oil), and cook each tortilla over medium heat for 2 minutes (we cooked ours a little longer because I like them when they are a bit crispy). Turn it over, add cheese, and cook until the cheese melts.



I was excited by how easy and fun this was! O had a great time tasting the dough. She kept asking "O taste?" Pouring the flour in the bowl
Mashing the dough with her hands
Rolling the dough with her rolling pin
Eating her cheese quesadilla. They were a little greasy since we used olive oil instead of cooking spray. Next time, I'll use a bit more whole wheat flour. O had lunch a delicious lunch of cheese quesadillas, blueberries, and tomatoes while standing in her kitchen helper while I cooked all of the tortillas :)

Homemade Pizza Night

I'm trying to get back into the routine of having homemade pizza for supper on Friday nights. I couldn't find the recipe that I've used in the past, so my friend, Becca, sent me her recipe. I decided to share it since the pizza was DELICIOUS. Since we don't eat red meat, we always make vegetarian pizzas and the bell pepper and tomatoes from our garden were delicious on it. We usually have leftovers, but we ate the whole thing tonight. Here it is:

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough (do not substitute flours - must be exact)

1 Cup Water (80 degrees) I just use hot water & don’t check temp.2 TBL Oil (I use Olive Oil)1 TBL Sugar1 tsp Salt1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour1 ½ Cups Bread Flour 1 tsp Active Dry Yeast

Select Pizza Dough Course if your machine has one.

Dough takes about an hour in my machine.

Place finished dough on a lightly floured surface. Divide in half and press onto a 12 inch pizza pan raising the edges. (Very Thin crust) -

Sprinkle the pan with a little cornmeal. It keeps the dough from sticking to the pan and gives the crust a little more texture. I use about a teaspoon and a half if that much.

Generously prick the dough with a fork. Rub a little olive oil all over the pizza especially the raised edges.

Bake in a preheated oven at 425 for 10 minutes.
Take out when the edges of the crust begin to turn a light golden brown.
Remove, add toppings and return to oven to bak and additional 15 - 20 minutes.

Yikes! I just read the recipe a little closer after I pasted it from my email, and I really didn't follow the directions. Oops! I put the toppings on right after I coated it with the olive oil, then I cooked it for about 15 minutes. This worked GREAT, but I might try the real directions next time :) Also, I didn't have any cornmeal, so I used whole wheat flour on my pizza stone. In the past, I've preheated the pizza stone but I didn't tonight because its so hard to transfer the pizza to a hot pizza stone. I was afraid that the crust would not be crispy, but it was perfect. The best thing about it is that I have enough dough left over, so we'll have pizza again Sunday night :)

Homemade Apple Chips

When I saw Megret's post about making homemade apple chips, I knew we had to try it. O loves apples, and this is a perfect way to enjoy them. Luckily, Elliott was able to find organic apples at the grocery store near his office. I didn't have the nutmeg or cloves (and I didn't think to ask him to get them from the store), so I mixed cinnamon and sugar and put it in the empty cinnamon container for O to sprinkle on the apples. She loved it!

Here is the recipe from Megret's blog:

APPLE CHIPS

makes 25-50 chips, depending on slice thickness and size of apple
1-1/2 T. sugar

1 t. cinnamon

pinch cloves

pinch nutmeg

1 large crisp apple (Braeburn or Granny Smith)
Preheat oven to 200 degrees, then line a baking sheet with parchment paper.


I also didn't have parchment paper, so I just coated the pan with olive oil

Baking Bread

O and I baked bread this morning. Although, really we just put the ingredients in the bread machine and pressed start. It was lots of fun and very messy. O loved pouring the ingredients into the container. Unfortunately, her aim was a little off, so we had flour everywhere. She also liked mixing everything together, and she even snuck a few bites. Yuck! We made honey oatmeal bread, which is my favorite bread machine bread. Its delicious! Here is the recipe:

INGREDIENTS
1 1/4 cups water
3 cups bread flour (we used 1.5 cups of bread flour and 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour)
2 tablespoons honey
1 1/2 tablespoons dry milk powder
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup quick cooking oats
2 tablespoons margarine
1 tablespoon active dry yeast

DIRECTIONS
Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select White Bread setting, and Start.