Pretzel Rolls

Somehow I got it into my head that I wanted to make pretzel rolls. Probably it was a combination of Pinterest (because where else would I get any idea?) and Costco (their pretzel rolls are delicious). Anyway, I went in search of an easy recipe, and I found the perfect one at Caramel Moments. It is such a great recipe, that when I took these rolls out of the oven, I said "Holy Cow, I can't believe these turned out so great!"

I mean, check them out!

Pretty great, right?! 

I followed Caramel Moment's recipe pretty closely, but I have a few tricks for you if you are going to make them. 

1. I used my pizza cutter to divide the dough into 12 pieces...worked like a charm! 

2. I used my whoopie pie pan to bake the rolls. It was the exact right size!

So if Pinterest and Costco are making you crave pretzel rolls, head on over to Caramel Moments for the recipe, and hopefully yours will turn out amazing too!

Creepy Carrots!

We just had the best author visit from Aaron Reynolds at my school! I mean, look at how much fun we are having...and that's just the staff, not to mention how much the kids LOVED it!

We decorated the school with characters from his books, and it turned out great!

But the best part, of course, was the treats! One of our favorite books of his is Creepy Carrots, where a greedy rabbit thinks he is being followed by the carrots he snacks on, so we created a cake and some cake pops to go with the book. I think they turned out pretty amazing!

Watch out for the creepy carrots! Tunk...tunk...tunk...

Valentine Cookies

I don't know if you all know this, but teachers get a lot of Valentine candy. And most of the time, most of my Valentine candy gets given away or sits on the counter until long after Valentine's day is past. So this year, I was inspired by a friend who melted all of her candy down and made chocolate covered strawberries. I wasn't quite that ambitious, but I did gather up all of my candy and chop it up into little pieces. I used all of it, except for the ones that were a weird color pink in the middle - those got thrown in the trash.

I chopped it all up, and then threw it into my cookie dough. When I took the cookies out of the oven, I realized this might not have been the best idea...

These are definitely not the most beautiful cookies ever. Turns out, using the chocolates with caramel in the middle was not the best idea I've ever had. When the caramel melted, it stuck to the cookie sheet and made the cookies really hard to get off the pan. I will also say that cheap Valentine chocolate still tastes like cheap Valentine chocolate, even when it's disguised as chocolate chip cookies. Of course, it's not stopping me from eating them, but maybe next year I'll try chocolate covered strawberries...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Cake Pops

Yikes, it's been a long time (seriously, almost a year) since I've posted anything on here. Well, I'm probably not going to start posting very regularly any time soon, but these cake pops were too cute not to share.

Two of my very favorite kids in the whole world celebrate their 3rd and 5th birthdays this month and they had a TMNT themed party. I knew we could make some pretty cute cake pops for this theme...

I started with green cake pops, then called my adorable helpers and we went to work making the masks.

We used airheads candy for the masks and I bought candy eyes. We attached the eyes using some of the leftover candy melts and then stuck the masks on the cake pops. The last step was drawing a mouth with gel frosting. Most of the turtles were happy faces, but I was informed that the red one (I can't remember his name) was mad and needed an angry face! I love how they all turned out a little different (and some better than others!)

Happy Birthday, Kiddos! 

Homemade Bread

When I was little, my grandma used to bake homemade bread everytime we went to visit. It always tasted so much better than store bought, and we would eat it all before we left for home. As we got older, she didn't make it quite as much, but I still always think of her whenever I think about homemade bread.

Not too long ago, someone came across her recipe, and I decided to give it a try. I had never made bread before, so I wasn't sure how it would turn out. While I was wondering "Is this enough flour?" and "Should the dough be this sticky?", I was wishing that I would have gotten lessons from my grandma. But in the end, even though I couldn't find exactly the right flour, and even though one of the loaves turned out oddly misshapped, and even though it didn't taste quite the same as the bread Grandmommy used to make, I still think it turned out pretty great!

 

Baby Shower Treats

My mom hosted a baby shower (for twins!) last weekend, and of course, she roped my sister and I into planning the decorations and treats. My sister made the sweet little flags and sign for the door and I made the cake pops for favors. So cute!

Robots!

I absolutely love these robot cakepops that my sister and I made for my nephews 1st birthday. They might have taken FOREVER to make, but I'm pretty sure it was worth it!

I think most of the reason they took so long is because of all of the details we added. They eyes are candy necklace pieces and the mouths are pieces of fruit leather. The little dots are those candy buttons - the kind that are stuck to paper and when you peel them off you always end up eating some paper with the candy! The collar at the bottom is a life saver. All that had to be put on after rolling the cake into squares and dipping it in the gray candy melts.

Good thing they turned out so cute (if I do say so myself). And I love how they looked at the party with the Little Buddy's cake in between.

And, check out the baby robot right in front - his blue eyes look so huge on his face. I think he might be my favorite!

Happy Birthday, Little Buddy!

My sweet little nephew turned 1 on Sunday!

To help him celebrate, my sister and I made him a cute little smashing cake.

And even though he didn't really love his cake (I think he'd rather eat his veggies), I still think it turned out pretty cute!

And the groundhog says...

 

 

Phil did not see his shadow this morning...Spring comes early this year!

 

 

Thanks for not seeing your shadow today, little guy!

Goundhog Day!

Here's a little groundhog, furry and brown -

He's coming up to look around.

If he sees his shadow, down he'll go -

Then 6 more weeks of winter, OH NO!

 

 

Will it be 6 more weeks of winter?

Or early spring?

 

We'll find out tomorrow...

Owl Cakepops

These cute little owl cake pops were for another baby shower last weekend. I think they turned out super cute. I love how the green cake pops are like the trees that the little owls are nesting in. But I think my favorite part has to be the big eyes made from pieces of a candy necklace.

 

 

 

And good thing they had the baby shower already, because the little guy was born yesterday - a month early!

Snickerdoodles with the Second Graders

Around this time of year everyone starts thinking about getting presents, of course, but I think I really love giving presents more. I like the challenge of figuring out what to get everyone on my list and then seeing everyone's reaction to their gifts. This year I wanted to help my second graders get in on the fun of giving. I decided we should bake some snickerdoodle cookies and then hand them out to the teachers and staff in our school building.

We made them at school, which was a little bit of a challenge, because we don't actually have an oven in the kitchen at our school. But it worked out pretty well anyway.

The day before baking day (also known as "the best day ever") we read the recipe and the kids got to sign up for the ingredients they wanted to put in. The next day, all they had to do was follow the recipe, and there was no arguing about who got to put the eggs in the bowl!

On baking day, first we gathered up all of our ingredients and called in some volunteers to help. Then we got to work. We mixed all of the ingredients together. It was hard work, because we didn't have any fancy mixers, just wooden spoons.

When we finally finished mixing, the next step was to roll the dough into little balls and then roll each one in cinnamon sugar. One of my sweet girls brought in some sprinkles, so we got to add a little color to our cookies! When we were finished, some of the balls of dough were little and some were big, but they all looked pretty and festive.

The next step was for me to take them home and bake them. It took a while, because there were 6 tables of second graders. Each table mixed up a batch, which made a lot of cookies! The next day, I brought the cookies back to school. We each sampled one, then wrote some sweet little notes to the teachers in our building, thanking them for all of their hard work. The kids went out on secret delivery missions and came back with reports of great success. They were so excited to spread some Christmas cheer throughout our school!

 

Now go spread some of your own Christmas cheer! 

 

Christmas Cake Pops

 I made these festive cake pops for my grandma's bake sale. I pulled out all of my Christmas sprinkles and went a little crazy! I think my favorites are the silver and gold. Or maybe the big green sprinkles. What do you think?

    

Happy 1st day of December!