Cake Pop Tutorial! {From a novice}

Posted on December 14, 2012 by Reb

Okay I have been reading Bakerella’s blog for years, I’ve bought her cake pop book and I adore her. After all, she brought cake pops into my life! While she is an expert and an artist, I am an amateur.

I’ve seen some cake pop makers in stores but they are not true cake pops, as you can see a cake pop is a mix of cake and frosting, a perfect bite. So here are the baby steps to making your own cake pops at home, they are cheaper than the ones at Starbucks and they are GREAT for bake sales!

Grab your ingredients, a box of cake mix and a can of frosting. You can really do any combo, I like cream cheese frosting because it’s delicious. Mckenna prefers red velvet, I’ve done strawberry for her birthday, really whatever you like. You can absolutely do homemade but the two store-bought items are the perfect ratio. Bake up your cake and let it cool – completely! When it is totally cool just crumble it up with your hands to make cake crumbs. Dump in the can of frosting and get to mixing. Try and get it totally mixed with no cake clumps, they will affect the integrity of the cake pop. (Ha, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever typed)

Okay, now a tangent on the size of your cake pop. I ran into an issue today with my two different sizes I was doing. I was using the small and medium Pampered Chef dishers. (If you don’t have dishers in your kitchen put them on your Christmas list, they are invaluable). The small size worked perfect, the large ones were falling off the stick. The larger ones could have possibly worked with thicker sticks. Anyways, the small ones were a perfect bite, so when in doubt, go smaller.

So using your disher scoop perfectly uniform bites onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. Chill for 20-30 minutes. Come back and roll them into nice crumb free balls. Grab some candy melts (you should be able to find these in any craft store or sometimes in a grocery store) and melt them in a double boiler. Grab your sticks and dip them into the candy melts and then stick into cake pops. Chill again just to make sure these suckers aren’t going to fall apart on you. Dip into the candy melts and tap off the excess (but not too hard or you will shake it off of the stick!) You can stick these into Styrofoam to set, but I never have that, so I stuck them into an upside down colander (or three). Perfect!

This is just the starting point, there are so many ways you can decorate them. And they are just insanely delicious!

Enjoy!

Commence Baking!

Posted on December 13, 2012 by Reb

This month is flying and I mean FLYING by! As much as I am not ready I am being pulled into the holidays kicking and screaming. As usual I am a HUGE procrastinator when it comes to holiday stuff. My bestie Janelle reminded me that this was my make it or break it week. Friday is the last day of school for my kids so I needed to get as much done as possible while juggling all my normal stuff as well as a gingerbread house party and two Christmas parties. No problem! I work best under pressure!

So tomorrow is the kids last day of school and I wanted to send some cookies in with their teacher gifts (I’ll post a pic as soon as they are done) so I pulled out the KitchenAid and put that bad boy to work. My favorite newish cookie, Bars Bars. I have my old standard favorites that I grew up eating and have to make every year so it feels like Christmas, but this is one I’ve only been making for 7 or 8 years. I got it from someone I used to nanny for from an old cafe recipe book she had. I love them. They have made their way into my annual cookie plates and are here to stay. Baking this morning reminded me that this isn’t a chore I have been dreading. I love it!

Does the phrase “Cream butter and sugars together” make anyone else’s heart flutter? Because that is poetry right there. Also, I get some sort of sick satisfaction from having obscene amounts of butter, brown sugar and chocolate chips in my pantry.

But here is a fab cookie recipe that I recommend you try. And as always if we are friends in real life I have first dibs on bringing this to any joint social function. That is the law with recipe sharing.

Bars Bars:

2C butter

4C brown sugar

4 eggs

1T vanilla

2t baking soda

4 1/2C flour

6-7C quick cook oats

Chocolate Layer:

2T butter

1 can condensed milk

1t vanilla

2C chocolate chips

Cream butter and brown sugar. Add vanilla & eggs. Mix well. Add flour and baking soda. Mix well. Add oats. (you guessed it) Mix well.

Spread 2/3 of the dough on a 1/2 sheet pan (12×17) (I like to line mine with parchment for easy removal/cleanup)

Melt the ingredients for the chocolate layer in a double boiler and spread over dough.

Drop the remaining dough over the top. Bake at 350 for about 25-30 min. These are pretty rich so you can cut them smaller than a normal bar cookie.

These are SO SO good. So now I have cookies to send in tomorrow (should probably get started on the cake pops I promised Mckenna I would make for her party) and there should be plenty left over to send some to Omar as well. I am waiting for my Christmas cards to get here so I can start baking and giving cookies and cards to all of my local friends here.

I am rockin’ this week!

Eating Our Way Through the North Shore

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Reb

This weekend we headed back up to the North Shore. I am falling in love with this view as we crest over the hill and head down to the shore… When you actually see it in person you can hardly tell where the sky ends and the water begins. Also if you go earlyish in the morning you won’t sit in hideous traffic like we had to last time!

We made a quick detour to Turtle Beach since we had such good luck last time we were there. Gorgeous water, beautiful coastline. I can’t wait to do more exploring up here. It’s just so, so different than Honolulu.

No luck this time. I don’t know if we were just too early or what. Not a turtle in sight. Insert sad trombone… Mckenna was really bummed, so was I. We had actually brought our snorkeling gear with us so we could snorkel with the turtles. Omar on the other hand was thrilled because he was NOT in the mood to be at the beach. Weirdo.

Onward! We made our way over to Hale’iwa to poke around town and find something to eat. Please note Mckenna doing her best to look like my little Hawaiian girl by throwing a shaka! I may have made my poor husband pull over at both signs on the road (actually I made him pull over for the first one, he pulled over for me before I even had a chance to ask for the second!)

First stop on the agenda: Masumoto’s Shave Ice. A Hawaiian must do. Everyone and there mother will tell you that you have to go to this place so there is usually a huge line. I grabbed this shot as we were leaving. When we got there we only had a few people in front of us, almost zero wait. Also it gave us time to look at the CRAZY menu!

Below is the menu. It was VERY hard to narrow it down to 3 flavors! You can also get ice cream on the bottom of your ~~snow cone~~ sorry, shave ice, and/or condensed milk drizzled over the top. So far I have been a purist and haven’t tried it but I am going to have to start experimenting! Oh and they have a specific way they want you to order… how many, size, cup or bowl, etc…

This machine is an ice shaving beast. And the girl was crazy fast scooping and making the perfect scoop shape (and also clearly thrilled I am taking her picture.)

Yummy shave ice! What is not shown is that Omar dropped his shave ice about 30 seconds after sitting on a bench outside. There were tears. But he then got to share with all of us, and pose with my cherry/watermelon shave ice.

Verdict: All shave ice pretty much tastes the same to me. Stop by if you are there, otherwise go to one of the other million stands on the island.

After our shave ice we decided to get dessert. What? This day had no rhyme or reason to our eating schedule!

Just ended up grabbing a photo op and some cookies. We were a little disappointed by the baked goods selection for a bakery, but they do also bake their own bread and have a nice little lunch menu. Service, hmmm. Our order taker was friendly but literally stopped us 3-4 times in the middle of our order to deliver food/talk to other people. Super cute little place though. $1 cookies!

$1 cookie display. My walnut chocolate chip was really good. And Omar didn’t drop his!

Right across the parking lot is this trailer with dozens of chickens on it. You cannot miss the smell, it is divine. We had other plans for lunch so we decided to pick up a chicken for dinner. $9 for a chicken ($9.50 if you want it cut up). We also picked up some pineapple cole slaw. Yes I know, I was dubious too. But it is really good.

Grab a 1/2 or whole chicken and sit at a table and eat it. When we ate it for dinner there was only a backbone left in the serving dish, my kids picked the chicken clean. Great sauce or rub or whatever it is that they put on it. And when you are done you can wash your hands in the cutest sink ever. I love beach towns.

Next stop: Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck another must do according to every guide book, friend and tv show.

Super simple menu makes it easy to order.

While you wait grab a Sharpie and sign your name. Good luck finding a spot!

Omar got the spicy shrimp which weren’t that spicy to him because he has a ridiculous scale of spiciness from eating habaneros every single day. They were wicked spicy, I couldn’t handle them.

I got the scampi which were good. Both of our shrimp may have been a smidge overcooked. Good but we are also lazy and don’t like peeling our shrimp. (first world problems I know…)

So great day eating and trying lots of must try things. If you haven’t gotten up there yet, DO IT!

Homemade granola bites

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Reb

In our (my) quest to reduce the amount of packaging that we use and then throw away I was on a quest to find a homemade granola bar recipe. Granola bars and fruit snacks were the last two items that my daughter likes in her lunchbox but that are ALWAYS individually wrapped.

Pinterest came to the rescue when I saw a great no-bake energy bites recipe. I don’t know how packed full of energy my kinda similar but adapted recipe is so I am just calling them granola bites. They are also much easier to store and pack than a granola bar.

Cast of characters:

Oatmeal (1-minute), chocolate chips, nuts, coconut, honey, peanut butter and nutella.

These are great because they are really customizable. M and I made two batches today; peanut butter chocolate chip and nutella white chocolate.

First up: peanut butter chocolate chip.

This is a pretty general guideline because your amounts could vary depending on what ingredients you add. Tweak as necessary.

1 1/4 cup 1 minute oats

1/4 c chopped walnuts

1/4 cup mini chocolate chips (we were a little heavy handed with these)

Mix together and add:

1/4-1/2 c peanut butter

1/3 c honey

(I like to microwave the peanut butter for 30 seconds or so until melty to make it easier to mix)

Mix everything until the oats are well coated. If it seems a little to wet, add more oats. Too dry, add a bit more honey.

The next batch was nutella and white chocolate. Same general recipe but using nutella instead of peanut butter.

You could use any type of nut butter or mix-ins that you would like and tweak the recipe to your perfect level of sweetness.

When the mix has been chilled until firm, scoop it out and then roll them into compact bites.

Keep them in the fridge. Don’t know how long they last in there because ours are always gone within a week.

Rainbow Birthday Party!

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Reb

Friday night was M’s 10th birthday party/slumber party. She hadn’t requested a theme but that dang Pinterest kept popping up with all these super cute rainbow decorations and crafts! So I informed her that I would be doing a rainbow party and she was super excited!

Garland and tissue paper pom poms!

Tissue paper pom pom tutorial can be found here!

Entry way table...

I just used some 6×6 rainbow paper I had and laid that on the table and found that super cute birthday printable online!

Birthday Banner!

This was a midnight craft where I wanted one more thing to hang up! I had the paper, stickers and cardboard garland base sitting in my massive pile of scrapbook supplies! I like how it turned out and I’ll be able to pull it out for future birthdays!

M&M’s and sour patch kids used for rainbow decoration!

Rainbow fruit kebabs, super easy to make and the kiddos LOVED eating them!

Rainbow cake tutorial can be found here!

Rainbow ice cubes, just used food coloring to dye some lemonade… Put in glasses of Sprite!

Birthday breakfast! The rainbow waffles would have been cute with a circle waffle iron, then cut in half with whipped cream on either side… but they were a hit regardless. I used the same idea as the rainbow cake. Some of the colors did look a little brownish after cooking but the inside was pretty!