Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts

2.14.2016

Edible Icecream Bowls Made with Balloons!



My daughter made these the other night and I loved how simple, but cute they were!  A perfect treat for Valentine's Day, Birthday Parties, After School Snack or Summer fun!

1. In a bowl mix 1/2 bag chocolate chips with 1 Tbsp. vegetable oil and melt in the microwave 30 seconds at a time. Then stir chocolate and put in microwave another 30 seconds until fully melted.
2. Blow up mini water balloons.
3. On a cookie sheet, lay wax paper down.
4. With a spoon, put a circle of chocolate for each ballon you have (number of bowls you are making).
5. Dip each balloon in bowl of chocolate covering the bottom of the ballon entirely.
6. Place balloon in center of one of the chocolate circles on the tray.
7. Repeat process with all balloons.
8. Leave out to dry for 1 hour or until they are hard.
9. Pop balloons and throw all pieces away.
10. Serve ice cream and toppings in bowl and there you have it!

Enjoy!!

12.15.2014

Ice Cream Christmas Tree

This is so cute and quite easy for you to serve at your family, work, church or school parties.  Simply use a cookie sheet and cover it with tinfoil. Then scoop large balls of mint chocolate chip ice cream to create a christmas tree.  The top  row will have 1 ball, the second row will have 2 balls.  The third row will have 3 balls, and so on. After you have rows of 5 or 6 ice cream balls (the size of your cookie sheet and the size of the ice cream balls will determine how many you can fit), your tree will be complete.  Then scoop two ice cream balls of chocolate icecream and place them at the bottom of the tree lined up vertically to look like a trunk.

Make sure you keep this in the freezer until you are ready to serve.  Makes a super cute treat and an incredibly easy way to serve ice cream to the crowd quickly! Thank you to our cousin, Cathy, for the cute idea!

Merry Christmas and check out some of our other Christmas ideas while you are here!

6.07.2013

Mini Individual Cheesecakes Recipe

Ingredients:
16 oz. cream cheese
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
1 box vanilla wafers
1/2 can cherry pie filling
2" foil midget cups

Instructions:
Soften cheese, beat in eggs, vanilla, and sugar until smooth.  Put wafers in cups flat side down.  Fill cups almost full with mixture and bake 10 minutes at 375 degrees.  When cool, top with cherry and sauce.  Yield 30.  Will keep 4 days or can be frozen and then thawed.  All you'll need to do is add the cherries!

Enjoy these yummy treats for summer, parties, or holidays.  I love that they are the perfect size for dessert and if you want to make mini cheesecakes, you can adapt by getting mini foil cups and mini vanilla wafers.  The mini versions work great for an open house or potluck where people want a sampling of many items.  They truly make a bite-size as opposed to the version I posted above that are about the size of a traditional cupcake.  At our recent neighborhood party, individual cheesecakes were the first to go!

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3.07.2013

St. Patrick's Day Roundup: 50 Lucky (and Mischievous) Leprechaun Crafts, Treats, Lesson Plans, Games and Activities!

Do your kids love leprechaun mischief as much as mine?  Here are some of our favorite St. Patrick's Day activities, treats, crafts, lessons and more!  Most come from Mommy Lessons 101, but we've found some other sources we couldn't pass on sharing with you!

Recipes and Snacks

Treats
Crafts

 Lesson Plans


Activities and Games


Picture Books
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2.11.2013

St. Patrick's Day Craft and Treat: Leprechaun Hats and Homemade Shamrock Pretzels!

Shamrock Pretzels

Ingredients:
1 cup water
2 T. yeast
2 tsp. honey
2 1/2 cups milk
1 stick butter
1/2 cup honey
4 tsp. salt
8 cups wheat flour
butter
salt

1. In a large bowl, mix 1 cup warm water, 2 T. yeast and 2 t. honey.  Stir this together and let it rise, while you do the next steps.
2. Melt a stick of butter in a large saucepan.
3. Add 1/2 cup honey, 4 t. salt and 2 1/2 cups of milk and mix together at medium heat.
4. Pour milk mixture into yeast mixture and stir.
5. Stir in 8 cups of flour, 2 cups at a time, and add more if needed to create  dough consistency.
6. Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes.
7. Place it in a bowl, cover it and let it rise for 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
8. Pull the dough of the bowl and knead it a few times to get the air out.  Pull a ball of dough, about the size of your fist.
9. Roll it into a long snake.
10. Then twist it into a traditional pretzel shape, valentine heart shape or even shamrocks!  If they don't work at first, untwist them and try again.
11. After you shape each pretzel, put them on a cookie sheet about an inch apart.  Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.
12. Melt a stick of butter in a saucepan.
13. Right when you take the pretzels out of the oven, pastry brush them with butter generously.
14. Then sprinkle salt, cinnamon sugar, or colored sprinkles on them!

 

Leprechaun Hats

This craft is so super easy.
Supplies Needed:
White paper plate and white paper bowl (you want it to be paper, not coated with any plastic or decorations)
Belt cut out of black construction or cardstock paper
Buckle cut out of yellow construction or cardstock paper
Glue
Green paint and paintbrush
Optional - piece of elastic

Instructions:
1.  Paint the bowl and plate and let them dry.
2.  Cut out belt and buckle out of construction paper.
3. Glue upside down bowl to right side up plate.
4.  Glue the buckle to the belt and attach them both to the rim of the bowl.
5. Optional: You could easily attach a piece of elastic if you actually wanted to wear it, or it could just be a fun craft/decoration.


See our St. Patrick's Day section for more crafts, treats, lesson plans and activities!
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12.01.2012

On the first day of Christmas: H is for House Lesson Plan #2 with a Christmas twist...

In my rotating preschool, I was in charge of H is for House, but it landed in the holiday season.  A perfect chance for me to fancy it up with Christmas fun.

Music Time: We sang some fun Christmas songs and some house songs listed below as well

We learned about all kinds of houses and their opposites by learning the song,
 Houses, Houses Everywhere!
(Tune: Twinkle, Twinkle)
Houses can be made of bricks.
Houses can be made of sticks.
Houses can be big or small.
Houses can be short or tall.
Houses here and houses there;
Houses, houses everywhere!

Houses can be very new.
Houses can be older, too.
Houses can be low or high.
Houses! Houses! My, oh my!
Houses here and houses there;
Houses, houses everywhere!
Build a House(tune: Row, Row, Row Your Boat)

Build, build, build a house
With doors and windows, too
Add a roof to keep it dry.
A home for me and you!
Home (tune: BINGO)

There is a place that I call home
And house is it's name-o
H-O-U-S-E
H-O-U-S-E
H-O-U-S-E
That's what I call home!
{They loved taking out one letter each time by clapping!}

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Science/Social Studies: Learned about houses of other cultures and animals and played a matching game.  In the matching game, the kids had to match up an animal to it's "house" (bird to a nest, fish to an aquarium, child to a house, etc).


Storytime:

Craft Time: We made our own holiday shape houses and counted up how many of each shape was on it.




Math: We learned about patterns by drawing Christmas lights on various houses in specific patterns (AB, AAB, ABB, etc). Then we made our own "christmas light" patterns with fruit loop necklaces using only red and green fruit loops for Christmas. On the Holiday house above, the kids also had to fill out a paper that said how many circles, hearts, squares, rectangles, etc.  The kids had to count their shapes.
 
Snack: Along with healthy treats including reindeer carrots, clementine oranges and red and green food (tomatoes, celery, grapes, strawberries), the kids made homemade gingerbread houses to take home


I have found a bunch of GREAT and healthy snacks for preschool, Christmas parties, after school snacks or just for fun.  You can see them on our pinterest board here: http://pinterest.com/mommylessons101/healthy-christmas-snacks/

10.25.2012

Homemade Doughnut Recipe--A Halloween Tradition!

Every year when I was growing up, one of my favorite Halloween traditions was making and eating homemade doughnuts. My mom always cooked up a huge batch of doughnuts on Halloween night and we helped her deliver plates of doughnuts to neighbors. And of course, we ate a lot ourselves! I have kept up the tradition with my own children and friends. Today we had 16 little kids over, ages 5 and under, along with their moms, to make doughnuts. I did all of the frying in my electric skillet and then let the kids and moms do their own decorating with chocolate glaze, regular glaze, sugar, and sprinkles.

Below I have shared with you our family recipe for homemade doughnuts. Some people also call these doughnuts "spud-nuts" because they have mashed potatoes in them. Just a warning, though--unless you are hosting a big party or planning on delivering these to a LOT of neighbors, do not make the whole recipe. The recipe as written below makes 100 doughnuts. The doughnuts are delicious but they don't keep well--they are best served and eaten fresh. So if I am not having a huge group over, I will usually divide the recipe in 1/4.



Homemade Doughnuts

Ingredients:

1 c. warm water
2 T. dry yeast (dissolved in 1 c. water)
1 c. shortening
6 eggs, beaten
4 t. salt
3 c. milk
1 c. sugar
2 c. mashed potatoes (my mom uses instant, I usually just make mashed potatoes for dinner the night before our doughnut party and set some of the mashed potatoes aside for the doughnuts.)
2 t. lemon juice
2 t. grated lemon rind
½ t. nutmeg
12-13 c. flour
oil (I use canola oil)

Instructions:
Combine milk, shortening, salt, sugar, and mashed potatoes. Heat to lukewarm.
Add beaten eggs and yeast that has been dissolved in water.
Add 6 c. flour and beat until well blended and smooth.
Add lemon juice, rind, and nutmeg.
Add flour to make soft, but firm dough (firm enough to roll)
Knead until smooth.
Cover and let rise until double in bulk (abt 1 hour)
Punch down and divide dough in half
Roll out ½ inch thick and cut with cutter into doughnuts shapes.
Cover, and allow to rise until double, usually 30-40 minutes.
Fry in deep fat oil at 375 degrees. (I have made this in a pan over a gas stove, monitoring the temperature with a candy thermometer, but I find that they are MUCH easier to make in an electric skillet which you can just set to a certain temperature)
Drain on paper towel and dip in prepared glaze, sugar, or chocolate.
Use chopsticks to turn.

Makes 100 doughnuts.
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Doughnut Toppings

GLAZE

Ingredients:
1 ½ c. powdered sugar
¼ c. warm water (1 T. at a time)
1 t. vanilla
¼ t. cream of tarter
1 T. karo syrup

Instructions:
Put in bowl. Dip completely. Drip above bowl

CHOCOLATE GLAZE

Ingredients:
1 ½ c. powdered sugar
1 T. warm water (or more)
2-3 t. cocoa
1 t. vanilla
¼ t. cream of tarter
1 T. karo syrup

Instructions:
Dip top only. Optional: add sprinkles.

SUGAR TOPPING

Instructions: Put sugar in a brown bag. Cool doughnut, drop and shake in bag (You could also do cinnamon sugar the same way, too).

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5.22.2010

Free Ice Cream Today!

Don't know if you need ice cream where you are today - it's cold and rainy here!  But if you do... here's a freebie for you:


Cool Off With Ice Cream
Get a free ice cream sundae at a Walmart near you.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
11:00AM - 4:00PM
Come have a free ice cream sundae* with Breyers new and exclusive flavors, and Blue Bunny Premium Ice Cream and new All Natural Frozen Yogurt topped with Hershey's Chocolate Syrup, Reddi-wip, and Fresh Strawberries.
*While supplies last.

Check here to make sure your store is participating.  Looks like all the ones around me are...

5.21.2010

Free Chick-Fil-A Sandwich!

Make your reservation for an EXCLUSIVE premiere tasting of the Spicy Chicken Sandwich. From May 31 to June 5, Chick-fil-A is giving a limited number of FREE Spicy Chicken Sandwiches to customers who make a reservation. It will not be added to the menu until June 7. Just go to the website, here and sign up. Took me a minute or so. And enjoy!

4.22.2010

I Scream, You Scream, we all scream for Ice Cream!

Copied straight from their email... here's one of my favorite April family nights... 

31 Cent Scoop Night at Baskin Robbins
April 28 from 5-10 p.m.

Join us for 31 Cent Scoop Night at Baskin-Robbins® and help us honor America's firefighters. The Baskin-Robbins Community Foundation is donating $100,000 to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation™. Participating stores will reduce prices of ice cream scoops to 31 cents*. At some locations, you may also have an opportunity to make a donation to your local fire charities.

**You may want to call ahead to make sure your location is participating**

4.16.2010

Einstein Bagel Freebies

Become of fan of Einstein Bagels on Facebook and get 2 GREAT coupons that you can reuse over and over again through the end of May:

Get a FREE bagel every Friday through 5/22. No purchase necessary.
Print the coupon and reuse it every Friday through 5/22.

$2 Tuesdays: Bagel, Shmear & Coffee.
Reuse coupon through 5/19.

Valid at participating Einstein Bros. Call ahead to see if your store is participating.

7.08.2009

7/11 Free Slurpees


On July 11, 7-Eleven stores across the nation are celebrating Slurpee Day with a major giveaway of the slushy drink.

7-Eleven stores will be handing out 1000 free 7.11-oz Slurpees — in any flavor — from 7 a.m. until 11 p.m., or until supplies last.

I learned last year to get there early, here in Utah. They go fast. On the other hand, my sister in Washington had no problem later in the day. Enjoy your free slurpee!

5.29.2009

FrEe DoNuTs!


Friday, June 5th is National Doughnut Day, and to celebrate, Krispy Kreme will be giving every customer one doughnut of their choice!

Check the store locator to find a participating location near you.

No purchase necessary, one per customer.


**Completely unrelated, remember it is Friday, so you can get your FREE CHOCOLATE coupons today. You can get four coupons per email during the promotion, so try again even if you got one a previous Friday.