Make and Takes » Recipes

Easter Candy Made Into Lollipop Flowers

Marie — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:25:47 +0000

After we filled our Spring bucket with colored green rice, we filled it with some yummy Easter candy made into lollipop flowers. Don’t you just love the idea of edible flowers?!

Supplies for Easter Candy Lollipop Flowers:

Springtime Bucket
lollipop sticks – any size
Easter candy – Reese’s peanut butter cups and eggs, Jet Puff marshmallow shaped bunnies
toothpick

Instructions:

Place a lollipop stick into the bottom of the marshmallow. You may need to twist it in, go about half way through.

For the peanut butter cups, place a toothpick into the bottom of the candy. This helps make a hole through the tinfoil and candy paper lining.
Insert a lollipop stick into the hole.

Now place each lollipop into your vase or bucket. It’s ready to display or give to someone you love.

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Kid’s Crafts for Easter

Marie — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:30:44 +0000

Here’s a few fun Easter kid’s crafts and yummy treats we’ve made in the past. They’ll be sure to help you celebrate this Springtime holiday!

Crushed Egg Shell Art

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Growing Easter Grass in Egg Carton Baskets

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Marshmallow Easter Bunny Treat

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Teaching the Meaning of Easter

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Stuffed Fabric Easter Egg

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Chocolate Covered Easter Peeps on a Stick

Marie — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:48:49 +0000

You know I like to dip things in chocolate, marshmallows, ice cream, pretzels, and candy canes. Well, these Peeps were just asking for it! And they were delicious!

Supplies for Chocolate Dipped Easter Peeps:

chocolate to melt
Easter Peeps
lollipop sticks
wax paper
plate or tray

To melt your chocolate, place it in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 1 minute. Stir it, then if needed, microwave for another 20 seconds. Repeat if necessary. This works best with chocolate chips.

Place a lollipop stick into the bottom of the Peep. Dip your Peep into the chocolate and place on a plate lined with wax paper. Let this harden. You can also place them in the fridge for faster results.

Now you’re ready to Hippity-Hop on over to enjoy these Chocolate Covered Easter Peeps!

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Simple and Delightful Rainbow Cookies

Marie — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:32:50 +0000

These simple rainbow cookies are colorful and bright. Who wouldn’t want their day cheered up with a plate full of these?!

We used the Cake Mix Cookie recipe with a yellow cake mix, and added in 1 1/2 cups of m&ms for the burst of color. You could make these with any basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, just omit the chocoalte chips and add in the m&m candies.

Bake, cool, and enjoy these bright happy cookies!

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Pesto with Sun Dried Tomatoes

Lindsey — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:09:20 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for it to be summer. I miss my garden and my tomatoes and the sun. Solution: sun dried tomatoes. They pack a punch of flavor that gets me by until it warms up again.

By now, I’m sure everyone has heard of and probably tried these tasty little morsels. We simply can’t get enough of them at my house.

A few years ago, my cousin brought some delicious Sun Dried Tomato Pesto from her local deli to a luncheon. Man was it good! Then and there I decided to come up with my own version because, if I do say so myself, it is the most delicious dip/spread to ever grace my palate.

This is a recipe that is forgiving and open to adaptations. I just gave a rough estimate of how I make it. Feel free to add other herbs or ingredients to make it your own.

P.S. This is a great thing to make and take to a party.

(The pesto pictured above was made from oil-packed sun dried tomatoes and is a bit darker in color. The toasts are simply slices of a baguette brushed with olive oil and topped with Parmesan cheese, then broiled. )

You can use sun dried tomatoes bottled with olive oil, or loose in a bag. You can find instructions for soaking and softening the tomatoes here. When I don’t have fresh herbs on hand, I use dried herbs and it works also works great. Use whatever you have on hand.

The pictures below show the bagged tomatoes that I soaked. Honestly, I like it better with the oil-packed tomatoes because it’s easier, but either way is really great. Add less olive oil if you use bottled sun dried tomatoes.

1. A handful each of toasted almonds and pine nuts
2. 3 oz. or so soaked sun-dried tomatoes (or packed in oil)
3. Parmegiano-Reggiano to taste (I used 1/2 cup and it was a little too much.)
4. grated onion (abt. 1/4 of a small onion), 1 clove garlic (or more to taste), fresh parsley, red pepper flakes, freshly ground black pepper, kosher salt, dried basil (use fresh if you have it on hand)
5. Really good Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Place the sun-dried tomatoes in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until the tomatoes are roughly chopped. Add the remaining ingredients up to the olive oil. Process until smooth. Add enough olive oil to make the pesto the desired consistency–about 1/2 to 3/4 cup.

Yields about 2 cups.

Serving suggestions:

Spread for crackers, toasted bread rounds, sandwiches
Dip for veggies
Pasta sauce–you should a little pasta cooking water for a smoother sauce

Easy View Ingredient List:
1, 3 oz. package sun-dried tomatoes, soaked in hot water (or 1 jar of oil-packed tomatoes)
1/4 to 1/2 cup good Parmesan cheese (read: not Kraft)
1/2 to 3/4 cup good extra-virgin olive oil
black pepper
red pepper flakes
salt
basil
parsley
1/4 sweet onion
1 clove garlic

Lindsey Johnson is a SAHM to three little rascals and former food blogger. In her spare time she enjoys cooking, baking, photography, and reading.

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Donuts and Chocolate at the Winter Olympic Medal Ceremony

Marie — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:47:14 +0000

Yay for the Olympics! It’s been a fun week of Winter Olympic Crafts, and now it’s time to award medals to our winners! We’re awarding tasty medals to the athletes for their efforts in this week’s games!

For one event, I placed a donut Gold medal on the winner! I looped a piece of yard through the middle hole of a donut and tied it together. Then carefully placed it around the athlete’s neck! I was the proud Mother of an Olympian!

For another event, I awarded the athletes with chocolate medals. I bought Rolo chocolate candies and took them out of the foil.

I cut the foil in half and wrapped one in the gold side and one in the silver side. I kept the third one just in chocolate to represent the bronze medal! These chocolate medals were tasty!

Thanks for playing along with our Olympic crafts and games. I hope you enjoy the rest of the Winter Olympics for 2010!

We celebrated the Winter Olympic Games all week. To see more fun and sporty activities, check out the Winter Olympic Games for Kids series. Go for the GOLD!

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Creating Art with Stenciled Brownies

Jane — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 15:47:17 +0000

My 5-year-old daughter Cate loves cooking. She also loves eating chocolate. And, more than anything, she loves doing art projects! Coloring, cutting, painting, pasting…if there’s paper involved, she’s there. So I decided to combine all these favorites into a fun school vacation-week activity…stenciling designs with powdered sugar on brownies!

The day before we made the brownies, I told Cate about our project. She started planning immediately and, of course, went through a lot of paper. Here is her final blueprint for a flower, a heart and a star. She really enjoyed planning ahead for the designs.

I picked a simple brownie recipe so it would be easy to have Cate participate in the cooking process. There are minimal ingredients and the brownies come out nice and flat, providing a good canvas for powdered sugar stencils! (Click here for the recipe.)

The activity was much better suited for Cate than Anna, my 2-year-old. Anna got sick of watching the fun. When my back was turned, she went in for the kill! I caught her red handed, or shall we say brown handed. There certainly was chocolaty evidence on her hands indicating who made that hole in the brownies. She proudly showed Cate her handiwork after getting caught, little stinker! So much for that flat canvas for the stenciling! ;)

Anyway, back to the activity! We gathered our materials:

Two plates
The brownies
A plastic knife (by far and away the best tool for cutting brownies)
Fine strainer/sieve
Powdered sugar
Cardstock for the stencils
Scissors
Scotch tape
Pen or pencil

We did one stencil per piece of cardstock, with the shape right in the middle, that way the powdered sugar ends up only on the brownie you want it to! I helped Cate draw the shapes, and we took turns cutting. As Cate’s preschool teacher often says, it’s about the process not the product. I wasn’t concerned with having a perfect heart but instead having perfect fun with Cate. When it was time to cut the stencil, we cut one straight line in from the side – once the shape was cut, we taped the line closed to prevent powdered sugar from leaking through. The stencils ended up working great!

Next we cut the brownies with our plastic knife and placed them on one of the plates.

Then, you guessed it, we carefully centered the stencils on top of each brownie and sifted the powdered sugar over the top! My job was to hold the stencil in place while Cate shook the powdered sugar through the sieve. She loved doing this and kept telling me how it was “her job.” It definitely made her feel grown-up and empowered to perform such an “important” task! Once a brownie received its stencil, we moved it to the second plate.

Voila! Beautifully decorated brownies!

Cate had a blast! {So did I.} It was a simple project to do with her and she was able to be involved every step of the way. And it hit on all of her interests – cooking, drawing and eating! The girls certainly had no problem with that last task of the project…pretty patterns or not, the brownies tasted great!

Jane Maynard, writer and founder of the food blog This Week for Dinner, is a wife, mother to two beautiful girls and freelance graphic designer. Jane loves eating, which comes in handy for a food blogger. Chocolate, cannoli, and H&H Bagels are her top foods of choice.

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Lighting our Ice Cream Cone Olympic Torch

Marie — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:53:19 +0000

The Winter Olympics are here, and as part of this week’s Winter Olympic Games for Kids series, we started things off by lighting our Ice Cream Cone Torches!

With sugar cones filled with orange sherbet flames, it’s the perfect treat to get us off on the right foot! However, these torches won’t be lit for the duration of the games, as they were extinguished within minutes!

We’re celebrating the Winter Olympic Games all week. To see more fun and sporty activities, check out the Winter Olympic Games for Kids series. Go for the GOLD!

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Mini Ice Cream Sundae Candies

Heather — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:47:44 +0000

If your kids like miniature stuff as much as I do, uh mine do, they’ll love these mini ice cream sundae candies. They’d be a fun ending to a miniature food meal (make mini hamburgers, serve mini corns, and drinks in tiny plastic shot glasses or Dixie cups). Or just serve the mini ice cream candies as a fun treat – any occasion will do!

Decorating these is the fun part, and kids of all ages can get in on the action! Let your toddler help with sprinkles, or older kids help with mixing, construction, and decorating.

Ingredients:

2 cups round cereal (like Kix)
1 cup candy melts
Chocolate chips
Sprinkles
(Optional) Teeny marshmallows (I got mine in the coffee bar section at my local restaurant food supply store)
(Optional) Other must-have ice cream toppings (banana chips would be cute for a banana split-theme)

Supplies:

Mini cupcake liners
Small bowls
Spoons

To Make:

Microwave a cup of candy melts (or use white chocolate chips) according to package directions. I microwaved them in a bowl in 20 second bursts, stirring between each burst. Once melted, add gel food coloring and candy flavor oil, if desired. Don’t use extracts for flavoring or liquid food colorings because they won’t incorporate with the candy coating.

Mix round cereal into melted candy until covered. Spoon into mini cupcake liners (I turned my liners inside-out so the printed part would show around the candy.)

Melt chocolate chips for a topping and spoon on top, add sprinkles and any other decorations on top. Allow to cool and completely set before serving. (If using chocolate chips, you might want to pop everything in the fridge to help it cool and set).

Bonus Idea: You can also make yummy treats using coconut instead of cereal (really, you can use pretty much any ingredient with chocolate chips/candy melts and they’ll be amazing). For Valentine’s Day, I made X’s and O’s – they look great in a big group, or given in a gift box (heart-shaped or otherwise).

Heather Mann is a regular contributor at Make and Takes. She’s is the mother of three boys, ages 3, 2, and baby. She publishes Dollar Store Crafts, a daily blog devoted to hip crafting at dollar store prices, CROQ Zine, a print magazine devoted to hip crafting, and also CraftFail, a community blog that encourages crafters to share their not-so-successful craft attempts.

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Get Your Chocolate On With Candy Bar Pizza

Marie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:50:46 +0000

So absolutely glorious! Thanks to Fahrenheit 350 for sharing the recipe! Head on over to get your chocolate on!

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