Cloud Dough

Yet another kid’s craft that you can find all over Pinterest is Cloud Dough. We’ve been making and playing with cloud dough for almost a year, and my daughter still loves to play with it when I bring it out! What is it? Picture the consistency of wet beach sand, without being wet. You can form it into balls, build ‘sandcastles’ with it, but it’s a dry powder type substance. I love it because it’s such a fun, simple, and cheap activity – you only need flour and baby oil. We got our recipe here via Juggling With Kids. I highly recommend it!

It sweeps up in about 30 seconds, and I love that after you wash up, your hands are super soft from the baby oil! Definitely a great kids craft. Enjoy!

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Iced Pumpkin Spice Cookies

Happy Halloween everyone! I’m sure I’ll have some photos of my little miss trick-or-treating tomorrow, but for today, enjoy a yummy cookie recipe instead.

Pumpkin Spice Cookies are yet another fabulous part of fall. Granted, I could bake them anytime I wanted, but they just seem to taste better in their appropriate season! I think this is one of my most highly loved recipes by my friends and family (They did quite well at the farmer’s market last year as well). This year my best friend asked for them for her birthday, and my hubs asked me to bake them for the blood drive at his work. So I’ve had a pumpkin-y household for the past two weeks. It’s okay, I needed a break from all the apple goodies I had been baking anyway.

Ingredients:

Cookies:
2 1/2 cups flour (I use half white flour, half wheat flour)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened (I use Country Crock Spread and it works perfectly fine)
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup pumpkin puree (canned or fresh, whatever you have)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla

Icing:
2 cups confectioner sugar
3 tablespoons milk
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat your oven to 350F.

She decided she had to bake in her jammies!

First, mix your dry ingredients, stir and set them aside.

In a larger bowl, cream butter and sugar together.

Add eggs and vanilla and blend thoroughly.

Then add in your pumpkin and mix well.

Pour in the dry ingredients and mix until thoroughly combined.

And the most important part, the assistant taste test.

I use my dough scoop to drop the dough onto cookie sheets – if you don’t have one just drop tablespoon size balls. Bake for 15 minutes, and let thoroughly cool before icing them.(To make the icing, combine all icing ingredients and stir with a fork.)

To ice mine, I use a fine icing tip and bag, but a baggie with the tip snipped would work as well. Or, if you don’t mind a messier way, you can just drizzle it on with a spoon! (I say that’s messier because when I’ve done it that way I get it all over my cooling racks and table.) Let them sit out until the icing hardens, then store in an air tight container.

These are just so delicious – chewy and soft, just the way I like a cookie. Enjoy!

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Homemade Playdough

The other day my little miss and I decided to have a go at making our own playdough. I’ve been meaning to do this with her for awhile, and we finally got around to it!

It turned out to be not only incredibly simple, but the best consistency playdough ever – better than store-bought for sure! We made two varieties, just for fun – glitter and scented. We got our recipe via The Imagination Tree.

• 2 cups white flour
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup salt
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• 1 1/2 cups boiling water (adding more in increments if needed)
• Food coloring (I used icing dyes, which are oil based, instead of liquid food coloring since the colors are more vibrant.)

First, mix together all the dry ingredients and the vegetable oil. (My daughter was so happy about making her own playdough!)

Then pour in the hot water and mix up until a sticky dough forms.

I find the icing dyes give much more vibrant colors. And the glitter was just some plain old craft glitter.

At this point, you need to use your hands to knead it into the perfect playdough consistency. This is the most important part, so keep kneading it around until it’s right – it doesn’t take long. I tossed on some latex gloves for this step because this is when I  added the food coloring. Definitely wear gloves for this part or you will have some REALLY vibrant stained hands! But don’t worry, once the color is thoroughly worked through, it doesn’t stain skin or clothes at all.

The finished products!

We decided to experiment a bit and make one into glitter playdough, and one into scented playdough. We started with glitter. This is really, really easy. Take some playdough (my missy picked the pink ball) and flatten it slightly. Pour bunches of glitter on it. Then knead THOROUGHLY. You really want to mix it all in to make sure the glitter stays in the playdough, and doesn’t constantly fall off. But once it’s worked in, you have awesome glitter playdough! It’s my little girl’s new favorite.

For our scented playdough, she picked the red ball. I added in some cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice and kneaded it all around. It did turn the red a bit brownish, but that’s just fine! It smells soooo delicious when we play with it.

I can’t recommend this recipe enough. It’s super easy, cheap, and the consistency is GREAT. Great enough that we threw out her other old playdough to replace it all with the new homemade kind! Enjoy!

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Molasses Cookies

I’m about 95% sure that molasses cookies are my all time favorite cookie. They are such a perfect combo of soft and chewy, not too sweet with that lovely spice taste. . .I’m drooling thinking about them. However, I make them sparingly, and really only in the fall. I think the fact that I only have them twice a year or so definitely adds to my love for them!

Molasses cookies are definitely a bit more involved compared to my chocolate chip cookie recipe, but they are so worth it. So if you’re up for a bit of extra time and effort, here’s the recipe.

Ingredients:

3/4 Cups Margarine, melted. (I use Country Crock Spread which isn’t true margarine, but works perfectly.)
1 Cup White Sugar
1 Egg
1/4 Cup Molasses
2 Cups All Purpose Flour
2 Tsp Baking Soda
1/2 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 Tsp Ground Cloves
1/2 Tsp Ground Ginger
1/2 Cup White Sugar (for rolling)

First combine flour, baking soda, salt and spices in a small bowl.

Mix thoroughly, and set aside.

In a larger bowl beat sugar, melted butter, and egg together until smooth.

Pour in molasses and mix well.

Pour dry ingredients into the wet, and combine thoroughly.

At this point, cover your bowl with tinfoil and chill in the fridge for an hour, minimum. (Mine chilled for about two hours since I let it sit in for all of my little missy’s nap time!)

Once chilled, preheat oven to 375. Measure out your half cup of sugar into a bowl, and some flour into another bowl. Flour your hands regularly as you roll the dough into walnut size balls (mine were slightly larger) to prevent it from sticking.

My assistant really enjoyed the ‘flour your hands’ part!

Roll each ball in the sugar, then place on a cookie sheet.

Bake for 8 – 10 minutes, until tops are cracked. Cool on wire racks, and enjoy!

These didn’t last long in our house. This batch made roughly 34 cookies. . .they were gone in about five days! However we did share with our neighbor, and with my brother. That’s the excuse I’m sticking with at least.

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Zucchini Bread

She was so excited about making bread with the big zucchini!

This past weekend Grandma gave us two GIANT zucchinis (they are seriously longer than my forearms) which are just perfect for making zucchini bread.

So this morning we woke up, had breakfast, kissed Daddy goodbye as he headed off to work and decided to have a baking session in our PJ’s. A perk of being a stay-at-home mum: you can do anything in your jammies! Here’s my recipe:

• 1 1/2 cups white flour
• 1 1/2 cups wheat flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 3 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 3 eggs
• 3 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups grated zucchini (roughly two normal to small size zucchinis)

Preheat your oven to 325F.

Combine flours, salt, baking soda and powder, and cinnamon in a small bowl.

Mix thoroughly, then set aside.

At this point, I like to get my zucchini grated. After washing, I cut this giant beast in half, and then in quarters.

I scooped out the seeds with a spoon simply because with a zucchini this big, the seeds are about the size of pumpkin seeds which aren’t great to get grated up for the bread. However, if you are using normal size zucchini’s just grate the whole thing.

Once grated, set it aside as it’s the last ingredient you mix in.

Next up combine your sugar, oil, eggs, and vanilla in a large bowl.

Mix them thoroughly together.

Then pour your dry ingredients into the wet mixture, and combine very thoroughly. This will end up very thick – not as thick as a real dough, but much thicker than batter.

Then add in your zucchini and mix thoroughly. The moisture from the zucchini thins out the batter some, so it becomes much more pourable.

And as always, the assistant gets to sample the batter.

Pour in it whatever bread/muffin pans you prefer (I stick with my mini loaf pans) and bake for 45 – 60 minutes (for bread) and 25 – 30 minutes (for muffins). Let it cool in the pans for about 45 minutes to an hour once out of the oven.

Slice, and enjoy!

Until next time,

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Rainbow Cupcakes

A quick blog update – I finally added some new work to the Pure Inspiration page – please go take a look, there is so much awesome art there! Hopefully there will be more soon – I need to carve out a chunk of my time in August dedicated to finding more awesome art!

This past Sunday I celebrated one of my dearest friends 25th birthday. She’s now joined me in the Quarter of a Century Club. We’ve been best friends since we were 11 – it’s crazy to think that it’s been 14 years!! Anywho, I just had to make her some rainbow cupcakes – I’ve been dying to try them out. They’re a little time consuming, but extremely easy to do, and so much fun to look at when they’re finished! So let’s dive right in.

Ingredients 

1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter (I use a vegetable oil spread, and it works just fine)
2 eggs
2tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup milk (I ended up adding a couple tablespoons more for a better consistency)
Icing dyes in all the colors of the rainbow (I would definitely use icing dyes, NOT standard food coloring. These give you extremely vibrant color, whereas regular food color comes out very dull I find)

In a small bowl, whisk flour and baking powder together.

In a larger bowl, mix butter and sugar

and whisk until creamy.

Add in eggs and vanilla.

Mix until smooth.

Add half your flour and milk, and stir until combined.

Add in the remaining halves of the flour and milk, then stir until thoroughly combined. If your batter is a bit thick (mine was at this point) add in milk until desired consistency is reached.

Divide batter into six bowls. (I busted out my camping bowls in case the icing dye stained the bowls – it did not just as an FYI.)

Mix in about 1/8 -1/4 tsp of each color dye and combine thoroughly.

Lay a layer of your violet batter on the bottom, making sure it spreads to the edges of the cups. (I use silicone cups as they are reusable – less waste and saves money!). Then, keep layering each color on top in backwards rainbow order (ie; blue next, then green, etc). I used about a half tablespoon for each layer.

All the colors layered in – ready for the oven.
Bake at 350F for 20 – 25 minutes.
Let cool completely before frosting them!

The finished product! So vibrant – I just love them.

Ready to eat!
Unfortunately I was in a super rush when these were done and I totally forgot to take pictures of them all together before frosting them. DOH. Also, as you may have noticed, I didn’t have my little miss help with these. Although the dye doesn’t stain dishes, it absolutely does stain skin and clothes (I looked like I dipped my hand in a rainbow at the end of this). And while I don’t mind mess, that’s pushing it! So I’d leave the little ones out of this recipe. These do not stain once baked though, so you don’t have to worry about rainbow teeth!

So as you can see, these are pretty simple and just SO CUTE! If my little miss has an art party for her birthday theme this year, I’m totally making them again. They are just vibrant and fun.

The party was totally stellar, as always. A great gathering of friends, with some great food to boot. The birthday girl is into archery, so she had a course set up for her archer friends to shoot with her, and I tagged along for photo ops.

The birthday girl being a total badass.

Until next time!

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Nom Nom ‘Nana Bread

Thanks to my two and a half year old I now pronounce the word ‘banana’ as ‘nana’, and thus apply it to all banana related things.

It was cool enough last week for me to get in some baking. Yay! Upon opening my freezer, I discovered that I had SEVENTEEN overripe frozen bananas in there. So naturally, some banana bread was in order! Especially since it then meant I had room for some fro yo in the freezer. Yummo.

I always use overripe bananas when making banana bread. I usually wait until they are fully spotted and brown in the fruit basket, then I pop them in the freezer where they last for a long time. . .I don’t think mine have ever really lasted longer than a couple weeks in the freezer since I bake all. the. time. But I would say they’d last many months frozen for sure. I use the overripe bananas mainly because they are so much sweeter than ‘ready to eat’ bananas, which really cuts down on the sugar you have to add. (Just as an FYI, the reason the banana fruit browns is the process of the starch turning to sugar – hence the sweeter-when-brown deal.)  So I got out my recipe book and went to town!

This recipe is my dad’s version – I’ve been eating this banana bread my whole life!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 & 1/4 cups granulated sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups mashed bananas (roughly 6 average size bananas)
• 1 & 1/4 cups white flour
• 1 & 1/4 cups wheat flour
• 1 & 1/2 tsps baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
  Adding walnuts is always optional; I can’t stand them, so my bread is nut-free!
  Preheat oven to 350F.

Add flours, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl. . .

. . .and mix well!

 
In a separate larger bowl, combine oil and sugar and beat until creamy. Also, mash your bananas – I usually do it after the oil/sugar step. I opted not to photograph getting the frozen bananas out of the peels and mashing them because frankly, it looks incredibly gross. It really does – seriously unappetizing. . .but I promise you’ll end up with delicious banana bread!

After the oil and sugar is creamed, add in eggs and beat well.

Then pour in your mashed bananas and mix until fully blended together.

Pour you dry ingredients into the wet mixture,

and combine thoroughly.

And of course my little baking assistant always gets to sample the batters!

Pour batter into loaf pans. I use a silicon pan with four mini loaves as you can see. I find them much easier than dealing with metal ones – despite being stainless steel all the ones I used to have would end up rusting. These are amazing, completely non-stick meaning no greasing is needed, and super easy to clean. Can’t go wrong in my book! If I feel like making full size loaves, I use glass pans, which definitely DO need to be greased before the batter is put in! These also make great muffins – fill your muffin tins 2/3 full.

Bake for 45min to 1hr for loaves; I’d check muffins after 25mins. Once out of the oven, let cool for a full hour for loaves – thirty minutes for muffins. Then pop out of the pans and enjoy!

This bread also freezes extremely well. I usually give away some of my loaves to my family, but occasionally we’ll pop a couple into the freezer to have on hand. A couple slices with a cup of tea is one of my all time favorite breakfasts. . .or afternoon snacks. . .or both in one day. Yum.

Lastly, a quick aside about my baking. You may notice in my photos there aren’t any electric mixers – handheld, or stand. I don’t use them in everyday baking (I use a handheld mixer when I make buttercream frosting – doing that by hand would just be too difficult for my taste). I know I’m a bit old fashioned at heart, and maybe that’s why, but I’ve just never seen a need! Everything I make is easily done by hand with a whisk. Yes, it takes a bit more elbow grease, but I’m fine with that. However, if you use a mixer – simply apply it where it’d normally be used!

C is for Cookie. . .

. . .that’s good enough for me! You’re welcome for getting the Cookie Monster song stuck in your head. 🙂

I love to bake. I thank my grandmother for instilling that in me – one of my absolute favorite memories with her is being probably four, standing on my stool up at her counter and making homemade bread with her. She still makes it by hand to this day. Nowadays, my baking tends to be more dessert focused than hers ever was! In the summer baking is usually a rarity for me – it’s just too hot and humid. I got my fill of summer baking last year when I was doing a weekly farmers market selling my baked goods – every Friday was spent in my kitchen for a ten hour baking day in 90+ degree heat. I definitely don’t miss that part of it!

Lately, despite the week and a half straight of rain up here, it has still been a hot humid mess. However, it finally cooled off enough that I didn’t mind running the oven. My little miss requested chocolate chip cookies and I was happy to oblige.

I’m not a mum who minds mess. I love to include my little girl in as much as possible in the kitchen – even if it means added mess. I make the biggest mess ever baking anyway, so really she can’t add much more mess than I already do. Case in point – she didn’t spill a single thing while helping me make these cookies whereas I accidentally ripped the flour bag and poured flour all over myself and the kitchen floor.
Mommy – 0. Toddler – 1.

The recipe I use is a modified version of one I saw on Pinterest. I’ve tried many a chocolate chip cookie recipe, but this one is definitely my new favorite (at least when I’m using my modifications).

Ingredients:

3/4 cup butter (or spread) I use Country Crock Spread, which isn’t real butter and it works perfectly.
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup white flour
1 cup wheat flour (I always split my flour in cookies and breads between white and wheat. Sometimes I use entirely wheat flour. It certainly doesn’t make them healthy, but it’s slightly better! And there is no discernible taste difference.)
2 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

First, preheat your oven to 350F.

Combine your butter and sugars.

Stir until they are a smooth creamy consistency.

Add in your egg and vanilla, and mix together.

Then add in all the dry ingredients.

And stir it all up into a dough!

Then pour in your chocolate chips and mix ’em up.

And don’t forget to eat a few chips. . .

And of course a spoonful of cookie dough!! Yeah, we eat raw cookie dough in this household.

Scoop onto tinfoil (or parchment paper if you prefer) lined cookie sheets. I never used to see the point in a dough scoop until I did the farmers market. They were the easiest way to get uniform-size cookies and things! And now that I have one, I use it every time I make cookies.
Anywho, pop them in the oven for NO MORE than 12 minutes. They WILL look undercooked on top, but trust me, they aren’t! You end up with a soft chewy delicious cookie, that will stay chewy for days! I’d eat them within a week though. This recipe yields a minimum of 24 cookies – I usually end up with 28 – 30. Enjoy!