Easy Teacher Gifts!

 

Okay, these are the Christmas gifts that I got for my kiddos teachers. They would work for male or female teachers which is great because I know the guys can be hard to shop for! I totally forgot to take a picture before my kids took them in but thankfully I was in the class for a Christmas party and snuck a picture. I know, I am so weird and I’m pretty sure the other parents caught me doing it and think there is something wrong with me. But damn it! I needed photographic evidence of my cute craft!

I bought the cups and used some self adhesive vinyl and my cricut to cut out their names. You might be able to find these letters at a craft store pre-cut. I then put drink mixes including some of those Starbucks Via Iced Coffees in there. And I send in some of my bars bars I made. I hope they like them and use them. It’s a step up from the coffee cups it seems like everyone sends in. I got the cups for $6 so plus the various drink mixes I spent less than $10 per teacher. Not too bad.

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Cake Pop Tutorial! {From a novice}

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!

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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.

 

cakepops2So 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!

 

Make this!

Saw this while I was wasting time being productive on pinterest. Super fast and easier than monkey bread.

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Ingredients:

1 tube Pilsbury Grand Biscuits (I used the flaky layers ones)

3 tbsp. melted butter

1/2 c. syrup

1/3c. brown sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

And nuts are optional but I threw some walnuts in there.

Mix the butter and syrup. Pour half into the pan. Mix brown sugar, cinnamon and nuts and sprinkle half of that into the pan as well.

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Lay your biscuits around, overlapping. You could probably use two tubes and have them standing up more but this amount worked out fine for our family.

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Pour the rest of the syrup mixture and sugar mixture on top of the biscuits.

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Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes. Hello beautiful…

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Flip that bad boy out onto a large plate.Careful that sugar is hot!

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Pull apart and enjoy!

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(FYI, please don’t attempt to make this or any other sticky sugary pull apart type dessert in a two piece pan! Use only a 1 piece pan or you could end up with serious burns from hot melted sugar!)