Hammering Baked Cotton Balls

I've been excited to try making the baked cotton balls that I saw at Play Create Explore. I used whole wheat flour in hopes that our baked cotton balls would look like rocks. I put a cup of flour and just over a cup of water in a bowl and let Trip mix it up.

At first, he was excited to help me coat the cotton balls, but his fingers soon got messy, 

which lead to this...

He continued to plop the cotton balls in the flour mixture while I did the dirty jobs of making sure they got coated and putting them on the cookie sheet.

Once the cookie sheet was full, it was time to bake our "rocks." They stayed in the oven at 300* for about 45 minutes.

Our cotton ball rocks turned out great. Next time I would coat them a little less so that there wasn't as much of a "puddle" at the bottom. They served their purpose, though so it was just fine.

Trip grabbed his hard hat that Noni found for him and his new hammer from Bapa and we headed outside.

He had a good time pounding on the "rocks."

 He also enjoyed exploring what was inside them.

After some hammering, we decided to try some stomping. That was lots of fun too, but a little hard on the feet. :)

Transportation Cookie Painting

I recently watched an episode of The Pioneer Woman cooking show on Food Network. She was making some super cute hand cookies with her daughter and her daughter's friends. They rolled out sugar cookie dough, traced their hands with a butter knife and then decorated the cookies with a colored egg glaze. I hadn't thought of painting sugar cookies before baking them but had a feeling that Trip would enjoy trying it. He got some transportation cookie cutters for his birthday (thanks Aunt T!), so it was time to put them to work.

I made the dough, refrigerated it, rolled it out, and cut out some shapes. I decided to put them on parchment paper since I wasn't sure how much of a mess Trip would make with the egg glaze.

The egg glaze is simply egg yolks, water, and food coloring.

I didn't have any paintbrushes that I knew were food safe, so we used q-tips. They were not the best, but they worked in a pinch.

Trip enjoyed choosing colors and decorating his cookies.

He also liked using the q-tip to poke holes in the dough.

Once he was done painting, I let him add some sprinkles. After that, he didn't want to paint anymore, he just wanted to use the sprinkles.

They turned out pretty cute and tasted great too. Next time, I will probably make the icing too to add a little more sweetness, but no one complained about the cookies being plain.

Edible Playdough

We are right in the midst of our two week farm theme and having a blast. I will have lots of fun farm things to share in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I wanted to catch up on a few activities that we have done recently that I haven't blogged about yet.

Edible playdough was something that I've wanted to try for almost a year now. I can't believe it took me so long to finally make it. You can find the simple recipe here from I Can Teach My Child. All it takes is peanut butter, dry milk, and honey.

Once I had mixed up a batch of dough, I got the table ready. Each child got some playdough, a plastic knife, and a small package of Skittles. I also put out bowls of pretzels, raisins, and mini chocolate chips.

Z was the first to finish his creation.

E made an Easter egg.

A was proud of her creation too.

I joined in the fun and made a fish since we were in the middle of our swimming theme.

Trip observed what his friends were doing and ate some of his playdough, but didn't really create anything for a while.

Then, Z had the idea to make some ships.

Trip was quite taken with that idea, so his friend helped him make one. Then, they had lots of fun making their ship's cannons go BOOM!

 

As A started eating her dough, she stuck it on the knife and made it an ice cream cone.

The big kids ended up eating all of their dough, but Trip didn't finish his, so we just put it in the fridge and enjoyed it for another couple of days.

Pretzel Goldfish Treats

We made these cute treats for Trip's swim teacher. They are super easy to make and taste great!

Preheat the oven to about 170*. Place some pretzels on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat or some parchment paper. I had regular mini pretzels, but the square waffle/grid ones are great too. Unwrap a bunch of Hershey's Kisses and put one on each pretzel. Bake for about 5-8 minutes, or until Kisses are soft.  Push a Goldfish cracker into each chocolate. Refrigerate or freeze for a few minutes so that the chocolate can cool/set. Remove from the pan and enjoy!

These treats can also be made with Hershey's Hugs or with Rolos. Each different kind of candy melts faster or slower than the others, though so only bake one type of chocolate at a time. I used chocolate Goldfish, but other flavors would taste great too. The original ones would add to the sweet and salty taste and any of the other sweet flavors would work nicely too. Nuts can also be substituted for the Goldfish. The possibilities are endless!

Fizzing Sidewalk Paint

Trip absolutely loved this activity! It was the perfect thing for a sunny afternoon. I found this super easy recipe from Hands On: As We Grow and it took just minutes to mix up the four ingredients (cornstarch, baking soda, washable paint, and water) and fill a small spray bottle with vinegar (which makes the paint fizz).

Once outside, Trip and I got right to work painting. I wrote his name,

but also had to paint him a baseball diamond (because we can rarely do an art project without drawing some sort of sports field). 

Once we had done some painting, I gave Trip the spray bottle. He loves using a spray bottle anytime, but he was especially thrilled with what the vinegar did to the paint. He proceeded to walk around to everything we had painted and spray each thing.

He loved the fizzing and did a lot of giggling. :)

We will definitely do this activity again!

Y Week- Yogurt Cake

I found this delicious yogurt cake recipe just in time for Y week. It's very simple to make, and tastes even better a day or two after it's made- if it lasts that long, that is. I had a ladies' lunch to attend a few days after we made this cake, so I made a double batch, and put a cooled cake in a Ziplock bag. It was still super moist and delicious when I opened and served it three days after I had baked it.

Trip loves to crack eggs, so I let him help me, which is always an adventure.

His idea of cracking eggs is putting the egg, shell and all, into the bowl. He sure thinks it's fun, though, so I don't mind obliging from time to time.

French Yogurt Cake from the May 2012 issue of Bon Appetit magazine

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest
3/4 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350*. Coat a standard (8 1/2 x 4 1/4") loaf pan with nonstick vegetable oil spray (I used butter). Dust with flour; tap out excess. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Using your fingers, rub sugar with lemon zest in a large bowl until sugar is moist. Add yogurt, oil, eggs, and vanilla; whisk to blend. Fold in dry ingredients just to blend. Pour batter into prepared pan; smooth top. Bake until top of cake is golden brown and a tester inserted into center comes out clean, 50-55 minutes. Let cake cool in pan on wire rack for 15 minutes. Invert on a wire rack; let cool completely. Can be made up to three days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.

Enjoy!

Resurrection Rolls

One evening with some other friends over, we made resurrection rolls. I found the idea here from the Happy Home Fairy (a great site!) and couldn't wait to try it. It was a good thing that we did this with some older kids because Trip wasn't too into it. His friends, on the other hand, had an amazing time and their mom told me that she had to hear the story from each of the three kids when they got home.

All you need are marshmallows, Crescent rolls, melted butter, and cinnamon sugar.

The pure white marshmallow represents Jesus. Roll the marshmallow in the butter, which can either represent Jesus taking our sins upon himself when He died on the cross, or the water that was used to wash Jesus' body during the burial process.

Then roll the marshmallow in the cinnamon sugar, reminding us of the herbs and spices that were used to anoint Jesus' body. This can also represent that Jesus' death was a sweet-smelling sacrifice to God.

 The crescent roll dough represents the linen strips that were used to wrap Jesus' body.

Make sure that you seal the dough tightly around the marshmallow, pinching all of the edges together, then place them on a baking sheet. Put them in the tomb/oven and bake according to the package directions.

Once the rolls are baked, let them cool for a few minutes and have the children think about what surprise awaits them when they get to eat their treat.

They were super surprised to open their rolls and were amazed to discover that they were empty. Jesus has risen and all that was left in the tomb were the linens!

Although Trip didn't care to help us make the rolls, he sure did enjoy eating one and still talks about how Jesus was gone.

E Week- Treasure Eggs

I saw these cool treasure eggs at Play Create Explore.

The dough for these eggs is made with coffee grounds, flour, salt, sand, and water (which I cut down to 1/2 cup instead of 3/4). Once the mix was ready, I started sandwiching some little treasures between layers of dough and shaping the eggs. I was able to make eight eggs with one recipe.

I placed the eggs on a cookie sheet and baked them at 200* for about 45 minutes.

Trip had a hard time getting the first egg open, so he asked for a knife.

The knife didn't do any good, so I helped him crack it open.

It's a lizard!

He was excited to find a bouncy ball in the next egg.

 It then bounced off of the table and he said, "touchdown!"

Then, he decided that the eggs were dinosaur food and proceeded to feed the dinosaur that we hatched earlier in the week.