Chocolate Crinkles

I had a wonderful Christmas but kind of feel like I missed a lot of Christmas.  My second daughter was born a few days before Christmas so I didn't get to bake much or attend any Christmas parties.  December went by so fast!  Too fast for my liking!  I just love Christmastime.  Anyway, I'm loving having 2 kids.  I'm super tired but just about recovered from the delivery and getting adjusted to be a mommy of two.

Today, I made Chocolate Crinkles.  I've never eaten them or made them before, but I've seen them a lot around the holidays.  This recipe made beautiful cookies that were light and fluffy, not really with a rich chocolate flavor.  They were alright but I prefer cookies more dense and rich.  Maybe next time I'll make these with a recipe that asks for chocolate instead of cocoa powder. 

 I used a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop and baked for 15 minutes at 350

Sorry for the blur in the center of the pictures.  I recently started letting my 2 year old use my camera so she can learn to take pictures.  After I downloaded the pictures and saw the blur, I noticed a big fingerprint on the lens of m camera.

Ice cream and brownies

 I made this tiny ice cream dessert for family who came over for lunch this weekend.  Ganache, 3 tiny scoops of vanilla ice cream and a brownie in the shape of a star.  I  loved this dessert.  First of all I love tiny dishes!  I just bought these from Bed Bath and Beyond 12 for $20 and used the $5 off coupon.  And two of my favorite sweets are ice cream and brownies.  I prepared this ahead of time and kept them in my freezer on my tray.

I am a loyal fan of Ghiradelli brownies and have only made those. But I didn't have any brownie mix at home so I found this recipe that I really liked which I used this weekend. 

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease an 8x8 inch square pan.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, butter and water. Cook over medium heat until boiling. Remove from heat and stir in chocolate chips until melted and smooth. Mix in the eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the chocolate mixture. Spread evenly into the prepared pan.
3. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, until brownies set up. Do not overbake! Cool in pan and cut into squares. 

My baby shower favors

We had our baby shower last week.  It was wonderful!  My sister asked me what theme I wanted for the shower and I didn't have a preference but I knew I wanted pumpkin pie, pecan pie and other autumn desserts.  The shower ended up just being decorated like it was Thanksgiving.  It was beautiful and so delicious.

I made the favors for the guests.  Nothing new, it was pretty much the same favor I've given at many other parties.  I already had some little boxes (from papermart.com) and I used one of  my favorite chocolates: Lindt Truffles.  Costco used to carry bags of the milk chocolate truffles all year long but in the last couple years or so, they only carry them just before and during the Christmas season.  The bag they carry now has assorted truffles:  milk, white, dark, peanut butter and 60% dark.  Oh So Good!!

 Here, my daughter and nephew were helping me fill the boxes.  Three truffles per box.

 

I made labels with MS Publisher and instead of using ribbon, I printed out orange and white checkers and cut them in strips to use on the favors.  

Tangled tower pinata

One of my nieces is having a Disney's Tangled birthday party.  My gift for the birthday girl is making the pinata.  Recently I've seen a lot of birthday cakes that look like the tower.  I loved how the purple shingles on the roof looked made out of fondant. I thought it would be interesting to see a tower pinata with little pieces of purple tissue flying in the wind as it hung outside at a birthday party. 

Below are some pictures that I used to help me design the pinata.  I wanted to add more to the pinata, but the pinata is such a short version of the tower, I had to leave a lot of details out. 

a screen shot from the movie

 The international movie poster

the top of the princess float at the Disneyland parade

 another shot of the float

 Just a box that i shaped

I used some packing tape and tacky glue

I wrapped it in black construction paper.  I wish I had beige instead but didn't have any, so I decided on black.

 I made spacers out of squares of cardboard to for the top portion of the tower (where the windows are)

 My little helper, helping me to stack the cardboard pieces

 I let them dry for a few minutes

 I glued them near the top

 The top of the tower was just construction paper glued to the spacers.  I changed it though, not sure why I made it black, but later I changed it to white. 

Sorry, by the time I took this next picture, I had done a lot but didn't take any pictures of the work.  My daughter was "helping" me and it was just a big mess on my dining table.  Here I had added strips of brown paper to the base of the tower and glued on different colored rectangle paper to look like bricks.  I also started making the roof after I attached some hemp string on the inside.  I used glue and tape to keep the rope in place in 4 places.  Then I used strips of cardboard to start making the roof

 Here I glued on a bunch of little pieces of white paper to complete the roof

 I made little squares of purple tissues for the shingles and just started layering them from the bottom

 I curled the ends of brown paper with a small paint brush and added some flowers

the vines are just green tissue i rolled tightly together

 

The pinata is about 17 inches tall and the bottom diameter is about 7.5 inches.  I don't know how long this took.  But it was hours and hours.  If I had a few minutes or an hour free during the day I would work on the pinata.  It was a lot of fun, I love doing this stuff.  I think I may try making another and see if I can sell it online.  I want to remain a stay at home mom, but if there is something I can do when I have free time, that I enjoy, I think I better jump on it because some extra cash would be nice right now.

Lego Birthday Party

My daughter Sofia turned 2! We had her party earlier this month and the theme was Legos. She (and I) acquired the love for Legos from my husband who loved Legos as a kid, as still does. He has some Lego sets that are maybe 20 years old that we still have. Sofia loves playing with them and Duplos as well.

We had a had a smaller party this year, we invited half the amount of people. Big parties are nice, but expensive.

We only had 3 games/activities but our guests enjoyed them and they occupied them the whole duration of the party. No one left for 5 hours or so. I was so happy to see them have so much fun.

The first was an activity similar to Build and Test at Legoland. I asked my dad to build a ramp where the kids could race cars they made. I wish I had time to paint the ramp black with yellow stripes to look more like a road, but I ran out of time. We wanted to have a lot of bricks and wheels so there would be a good selection for our guests building cars so we bought some Lego knock offs. They were so cheap (price wise and quality wise) but I'm glad we bought them because some were lost and broken after the party. Costco sells them, they are called "Best Lock" and I believe it was $18 for 900 pieces. We bought 2 boxes. We had the kids build and race first and then later in the day it was the adults turn. It was a lot of fun.





The second game was a Duplo game. Whoever could build the tallest tower in 60 seconds was the winner. This game was great, it was easy and everyone enjoyed it. We had a prize for the kid and adult who made the tallest tower.

The third game was a Lego building game. Whoever was fastest building this little airplane was the winner. Again we had a prize for the kid and adult who was the fastest.

We ordered food this time. I learned my lesson from last year. I was trying to save money so I made all the food last year and I was so stressed out that I didn't enjoy the first part of the party. So this year we looked into Souplantation, Rubios, and Pick Up Stix but it was about $9 per person. We decided on Panda Express. It was less than $5 per person. I was happy about that because with this pregnancy, I've been craving food from here.


We had lots of cakes! I made one chocolate vegan cake and 2 ice cream cakes. One was neopolitan and the other was toffee/chocolate and they were both covered with whipped cream. Nothing pretty but my family just loves ice cream cakes. Also, I had little chocolate mini figs on the side of the cake and a little mini fig holding goblets that held the 2 candles.

My friend, Jane, of Short and Sweets, made a vanilla smash cake, a mini fig that looked like my daughter (even wearing clothes that looked like what my daughter was wearing) and mini fig head cake pops! I mentioned to her that I would like some Lego themed desserts but I wasn't impressed with any of the cakes or mini fig cake pops I've seen people make. They look messy and usually people stick an M&M on top which makes it even more messy looking and disproportionate. But she made some, and they were perfect! You need to check out her work. I'm so amazed every time I see a new cake creation she has made.


I was so happy I found this Lego mini fig ice mold. I was going to buy it on Amazon but couldn't get it cheaper than $15 plus about $5 for shipping but I found it at Downtown Disney at the Lego store for $8!!
I tempered some semi sweet chocolate and used the molds to make chocolate mini figs.


The cake and food tables were decorated with Legos. I used some of our Lego sets but I also asked my 7 year old nephew, who has loved Legos almost all his life to help me decorate too. So he brought some of his Legos to display.

Banner I made with scrap booking paper I bought from the craft store. I found an image of a mini fig's head online and just made many sizes of them and printed them out. Then made a template from card stock and traced them on yellow paper to make big and small mini fig heads in yellow for the banner and for the favor bags.

Here are the favor bags. I think I made about 14 or so.

Time consuming. But I did this when I was watching my daughter playing in the sand box and I had nothing else to do.

Bags from Michael's. I think it was about $5 for 13.

This is what I filled most bags with. I bought the snacks from the Costco Business center. There are only about 6 Costco Business centers in the U.S right now. I'm so happy one is close by. They have lots of prepackaged food, I guess for vending machines, so It was nice to find these things that normal Costco's don't have. I bought the crayons from Kmart when they had a sale, 24 crayons for 24 cents! I bought the Lego favor packs from Toys R Us. Most kids got the Lego airplanes because I opened up many of the the Jeep favor packs and just threw those pieces and wheels with the big box of bricks for the Build and Test activity. Some kids that attended have some food restrictions so I bought some other things for them.