Spindles Designs by Mary and Mags
Mom taught us how ... now we create together
Our family loves chocolate cake. Agreeing with Mr. Biddle, Disney’s “Happiest Millionaire”, “Chocolate cake is the perfect food”. This Sour Cream Chocolate Cake truly is a family favorite. There is never very much left after a family party. In fact, the kids will often come back for a second or third piece and the pan is empty. Another great thing about this cake is you just stir it together in a sauce pan.
I had a crazy thought on New Years Eve – Halloween Potion Bottles. I know crazy lady. What can I say? I was tired.
My daughter has been bugging me for months now about her birthday. She has wanted an Elsa cake the entire time, and has been just dying to have it. Her birthday finally came and we made the cake. I found this great idea from TwoSistersCrafting. I thought it was great, it included a link to sugarhero.com to make the “ice” candy.
The cake turned out great! My daughter loved it! She is still playing with the little figurines. We of course also took the cake one step further and the cake itself was teal.
We have a lot of family with birthdays in May, so we had to do a big family party as well. To keep up with the Frozen theme, I made cupcakes with the left over “ice” candy and little snowflakes.
I am constantly relearning the fact that my children are picky eaters. If it is something they have never seen before it is automatically “yucky” in their eyes. For my daughter, if there is green bits on it of any kind she will not go near it. There are a few things however that they will both eat with gusto. Meatballs is one of them. My children actually love meatballs. We do not eat them a lot, but I do try to keep some in the freezer. Yes, these freeze well and are easily re-heated in the microwave. As my entire family eats them they do not stay in the freezer for very long.
I was getting a little tired of meatballs in marinara sauce, and I was not sure if the kids would eat just plain old gravy. I did not have any BBQ sauce on hand, but it sounded good. So, after searching the internet for ideas (there were a lot…) I decided to just start throwing things in until it tasted good. It was a success, the sauce was great and the kids still ate it. This is really the most important part, having food the kids will eat is what is really important these days.
As summer approaches I am aching to be eating summer food like BBQ anything, fresh fruit, and popsicles. We tend to eat so much better during the summer than any other time of the year. I think it is in part because I do not like to heat the house by using the oven, so our desserts tend to be fruit, pudding, or ice cream. I think the other part is that we tend to be outside more and playing more and just eat less over all.
For the most part, fruit is all that we need to satisfy our sweet tooth after spending a day outside, however, every now and then it is fun to dress it up and have fruit dip. It is a little boring to look at, but it is full of flavor and compliments all fruit. We made the kabobs for a family party, we tried to incorporate favorites from most everyone in the family and still have it look pretty. We used wooden skewers and bit sized bits of strawberries, pineapple, grapes and “big” blueberries. I filled the skewers and put them on a platter. The fruit dip was of course optional for people to eat, but we did not bring any of it home. Which makes complete sense as it has yogurt and cream cheese in it, so it is a little cheese cake like, but dip like at the same time.
