Cupcakes and Commentary

I really should stop making desserts of this nature. At least they don’t last long! Despite my husband’s plea for a “plain” brownie I can’t seem to help, but add, add, add. And this is just another example of that! This past weekend I made Pat and Gina Neely’s Chocolate Brownie Crunch. It has Twix bars in it. Sure they have to call it a chocolate caramel wafer, but I knew what they meant. And it has walnuts. And it’s topped with ganache. And it’s delicious! As I said before, I’m not the best at coming up with my own desserts, let alone successfully executing a dessert from a recipe. However, I can pass along my dessert triumphs and this was definitely one of them! Not a piece was left by the end of the weekend. And now I’m going to go exercise. HA!

Tags: chocolate brownie crunch, Desserts

I have been trying to figure out a craft to do for St. Patrick’s Day. I found that there are not a lot of crafts out there, especially for toddlers for St. Patrick’s Day. I made this craft myself, and basically the end product is something that can be played with. Right now my mini cupcake is very into strings and laces, he loves to poke the laces through the holes in our sneakers. I figured this would be a fun little item for him to play with and it also helps him learn his colors!

So here’s what you will need:

Foam paper (I got a huge stack of multi-color foam paper at Hobby Lobby for around five dollars…good for future crafts)

A one hole punch

Scissors

A four leaf clover cookie cutter (Unless you are good at drawing, then you can just make it yourself!)

Shoe string, or cord ribbon

Some sort of arc tracing object (I used a 8×8 round cake pan…again I do not succeed with doing any sort of free hand drawing)

And here’s what you do!

First gather roygbiv foam paper (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet). I did not have a true “indigo”, so I used a lighter purple instead.

From the paper cut out arcs from each color, and then trace and cut out two shamrock shapes (I used a darker green for the shamrocks).

Put a hole punch in the center of each shamrock, and then a hole punch within each arc at each end. In addition put a few hole punches throughout each arc and on the shamrocks.

As you can see from the picture above, after you have created your hole punches, you then string together the rainbow. Now here’s the trick to keep it all in place. Tie the cord on one side of a shamrock with two to three double knots (one right on top of the other). Then string through all of the colors on one side. On the other side tie another double knot and then leave string hanging. Repeat with the other side…it should look like this…

And this…

And your knots should look like this…

See how there is cord hanging off of the other side? That’s the lacing cord for the finished product. To finish the ends so they don’t fray you can do one of two things. You can simply cut the ends, you can place a quality tape around them (I wouldn’t recommend this for toddlers as it can fall off and they might try to eat it…mine would!), or you can do what I plan to do and that is to get my Dad to torch the ends so they stay tight and will not fray (you’ll need a quality blow torch and oh yeah someone experienced to do that!)

Once you are finished, get practicing on that lacing! Or wear it as a hat. That’s what my mini-cupcake did. HA!

Tip: This should only be played with under supervision as it does have long strings and several pieces.

Tags: lace-up crafts, rainbow, spring crafts

I know. Three posts in one night. However, I have to post when I can. I organize my thoughts into multiple posts, mostly to prevent confusion later.

My sister mentioned a few months ago about a website called The Pioneer Woman. Then my husband told me he had stumbled upon this website called The Pioneer Woman while he was looking for gardening tips (I think our garden was a little late to be saved at that point. At least our garden thought so. I could show a picture of it, but that would be sad.). And now I have friends that are blogging their way through her newly released cookbook!

Needless to say The Pioneer Woman, her blog, and her cookbook have become quite a phenomenon and I am definitely a fan, and trying many of her recipes these days. I decided tonight even though our house is still recuperating from various ailments, that I would make macaroni and cheese and buttered rosemary rolls ala The Pioneer Woman.

I was excited to find that the rolls mentioned in her recipe were actually at our local Target and I figured since we weren’t going anywhere this afternoon (they take about three hours to rise) I would test out the recipe. Anyone who knows me well knows my obsession with bread products. I might should have named my blog “bread and commentary”..but that’s not as catchy, now is it? Apparently when I was a toddler they had to hide the bread, or I wouldn’t eat anything else for dinner. Anyway, I thought the recipe sounded good, but I was doubting the rosemary and especially the sea salt a little bit. However, I followed the recipe exactly and about five hours and five rolls later my little cupcake was looking for more rolls and I was sad that I hadn’t bought another package of rolls.

Between my son and I we ate the entire pan of rolls (he has obviously inherited my love of bread products) and I probably could have eaten another entire pan if they had been here. These are an absolutely fabulous, comfort food, that I could make again and again. And yes the macaroni and cheese was good as well.

To find the recipe with all of it’s specifications (and picture commentary…which I love, love, love as I am a visual learner) follow this link: The Pioneer Woman Buttered Rosemary Rolls.

My Attempt at Buttered Rosemary Rolls

Tags: buttered rosemary rolls, the pioneer woman

My little cupcake loves to color. He loves to color so much he insists upon coloring every day, at least twice a day. We color construction paper, we color pictures, he has even tried coloring his beloved bunny (as discussed in previous post!). Since coloring on the floor tends to lead to running around with crayons, our normal coloring spot is a booster seat at the table. Which unfortunately is the perfect place to not only color, but toss crayons onto the floor. Even my numerous sayings of “keep your crayons on the table”, I am ignored (by a one year old? Unheard of, I’m sure!).

This has lead to broken crayons…many, many broken crayons. It saddens my heart each time I hear one snap as it crashes to the floor. So I was delighted when my sister showed me how she had made chunk crayons out of many of her house of broken crayons (not by my son. Well, probably some of them.) So after looking at various places on-line I came up with a combination of several different ideas, and this recipe seems to work well for us.

What you will need…

A bunch of broken crayons in various colors

A muffin tin

Paper cupcake liners

An oven

What you do…

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees.

So here’s your crayons….

Here’s the only survivors I could find…

Why do you think purple is the least broken crayon? Could it be the super crayon?

Remove the paper from your crayons and break any larger pieces into smaller pieces so all the pieces of crayon are “similar” in size (they definitely don’t need to be the exact same size, just small enough to fit in cupcake wrappers).

Place the paperless, broken crayons in the cupcake wrappers. You can mix and match colors as I did. We made St. Patrick’s Day crayons and Auburn crayons, in addition to several other combinations.

I only put between four and six pieces in each. It’s up to you how many pieces you put in…the more pieces the fatter the crayon (and the longer it takes to melt).

Then place your cupcake wrapper crayons in a muffin tin as so…

Then pop them in the oven for about 10 to 15 minutes. Watch to see that they are all melted and then carefully remove them from the oven (they will be very sloshy…so handle with care!)…

Let cool in the muffin tin until the crayons have hardened. Mine took less than an hour to cool, but it depends on how many broken crayons you placed in the wrapper. Once the crayons have cooled peel off the wrapper and…

Tada! Crayon circles. Quick, easy, and back to coloring in no time (Well a little time. But not much.)

*Hints: I dusted off the edges of the circles after removing them from the cupcake wrappers to prevent flaking.

Tags: crayons, make your own crayons, melting crayons