Forced Family Baking and Crafting

I don't know when exactly this cupcake fascination started of mine. But today I found myself at the grocery store looking to make Frankenstein cupcakes. I had both boys with me so there's nothing like preventing them from squishing the bread, breaking the eggs, and looking for ingredients for cupcakes that are WAY too complicated. It's then that I decided to heck with the Frankenstein cupcakes, this mama was going to take the easy road. We went to my sister's house this weekend and I really wanted to decorate some cupcakes with the kids. How about some really simple skeleton cupcakes? Ok, so even if it's a really far stretch, just tell me that they look like skeletons even if it's a lie.



I think I might have made about 6 of these "skeletons" and then I just let the kids go crazy with the decorations and icing. You know what I mean, so-many-sprinkles-you're-not-sure-if-there's-any-icing-under-there kind of cupcakes.

Frankenstein, skeleton, witch or just a mound of cake a icing, these kids had no preference for the decoration. It all tasted the same going down.


Notice the cupcake in front of Nolan with only the icing eaten. I might as well have just given him a spoon and a tub of icing.



And it wouldn't be a holiday without some crafting. We had fun decorating these little finger puppets and Campbell especially had fun ripping the heads off of them. 100% boy right there for you.

We ran out of time to make caramel apples but I'd say that we definitely got bit by the Halloween bug. I can't wait to take pictures of them in their costumes. Now let's just hope my very stubborn 2 year old cooperates wearing his. I see bribery in my future next weekend.

Patriotic Cupcakes

I'm not a huge cook or anything. I can hold my own though and I have a few staples that will knock your socks off. But there's something about holidays that has me itching to make fun cupcakes. I play it safe and don't do anything that involves decorating with icing. The number one reason being that I have as steady of a hand as a kindergartner. No really, I do. I prefer to place things on top of the frosting. I think it's just a lot easier.

This year I actually did something with the inside of the cupcake and made layered cupcakes from Taste of Home. My niece, Dory, helped me with the batter and is my kind of girl licking up the leftovers. They didn't turn out as vivid as I wanted, but I heard the trick is to use the gel coloring instead of regular food coloring. Lesson learned.

Ingredients

• 1 package (18-1/4 ounces) white cake mix
• 1/2 teaspoon blue food coloring
• 1/2 teaspoon red food coloring
• 1 can (16 ounces) vanilla frosting
• Red, white and blue sprinkles

Directions

• Prepare cake batter according to package directions.
• In a small bowl, combine 1-1/3 cups batter and blue food coloring. In another bowl, combine 1-1/3 cups batter and red food coloring. Leave remaining batter plain.
• Fill paper-lined muffin cups with 2 tablespoons red batter, 2 tablespoons plain batter and 2 tablespoons blue batter. Bake at 350° for 20-24 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely. Frost with vanilla frosting; decorate with sprinkles. Yield: 1-1/2 dozen.

Obviously, I used blueberries for my stars and I used Twizzlers pull and peel strips for the red stripes. It was a little tedious to cut the stripes but well worth it to see how cute they turned out. The kids were eyeing them asking when they could have them. By the way, if you ever need to get a kid to pose for a picture, put a cupcake in front of their face and dangle it like a carrot. These cupcakes were magic for getting smiles for the camera! I just need to start carrying spare cupcakes with me to get those shots when my boys are sick and tired of smiling for the camera.

The best part for all my labor? My taste-tester faces, of course!

Invisible

WOW, my sweet friend Jenny read my last blog spot about my cupcakes. Who knew there could be such a good "sermon" on cupcakes? I've seen this before but I think after this week's cupcake debacle, this really hit home for me. What a moving message. It's like this lady read my mind. I don't do these things so Nolan will remember how much time I spent on these stupid cupcakes...and they really are stupid. I want him to remember that I did it all out of love. I just had to share...

A hard lesson learned

The past year I've really gotten into making cupcakes for Nolan's class. My spider cupcakes and Rudolph cupcakes were pretty darn cute if I do say so myself. So I decided to make Valentine cupcakes for his class party. It's been a really hectic week with both boys being sick and I don't know why I try and make things more difficult for myself, but I was determined to get them done. Like I said, it's one of those things I do out of guilt since I work.

So Nolan helped make the cupcakes and I cut out all the hearts on my scrapbooking Cricut, printed out little messages, and assembled these cupcakes. All-in-all I probably spent about an hour and a half on the whole thing. Totally ridiculous, I know for 4-year-olds who would be just as happy with a fun size bag of m&ms. Justin kindly reminds me that I could just give them each store bought cookies and they'd never know the difference. I know, I know! It's this illness that I suffer from.

So I go to pick up Nolan today and ask how the party went and if his friends liked his cupcakes. Then his teacher says, "Well one of the kids pulled the cupcakes off the counter and they fell on the ground." I mean I could see her lips moving but it was kind of like it was in slow motion because I was so trying hard to focus on breathing. I think I was waiting for an apology (even though it wasn't her fault...well except for putting it in his reach part) but it never came. I'm having a hard time letting this one go. But lesson learned...store bought sounds like a GREAT idea!

Rudolph cupcakes

es, We're on a roll...a cupcake roll that is. Minus the baseball birthday cupcakes, I'm on my way to redeem myself with the past two attempts to make adorable cupcakes (spider cupcakes at Halloween). These are the recent ones we made for Nolan's Christmas party at school. Almost too cute to eat, right? Almost.

Not so Itsy bitsy spider

This week the boys were back at school, thank goodness. Nothing like paying for a week of daycare and not using it at all. It has been a busy week with costume parades, parties and all sorts of festivities. The good thing about teaching is that most days I get off of work earlier than I did when I was working in the corporate world. The bad thing is that it makes it almost impossible to go to things of theirs at school during the day. They had a costume parade at school that I would have loved to go to but just couldn't. So out of guilt, I "labored" over these spider cupcakes for their parties. I know, can you believe that I made cupcakes after Nolan's baseball cupcake fiasco? I just never learn, do I?

It ended up being a family affair and we got them done pretty quickly minus Nolan slipping in an M&M here and there along with some Twizzler bites. AND lesson learned from last time, they were put in the fridge so the tops wouldn't fall off! I was pretty proud with how they turned out knowing my bad luck with baking cupcakes. The things we mothers do out of guilt...

How can he be four?

I can't believe it. Nolan turned four on Saturday. How? What happened? Why? It just doesn't seem possible. It's like you have children and you suddenly bought a time machine and didn't know you bought it.

Nolan's party was a "hit" ...literally. We went with the baseball theme since that is his newest obsession at church where they have a huge field. I normally book a lady I know to do our cakes and she is fabulous but this year I called too late and she was already booked. Note to self, don't attempt to be crafty and make your own cakes, Andrea. I stayed up until 11:00 two nights in a row making what seemed like 1,000 cupcakes and then icing them the next night. I had been fighting a cold all week and felt terrible. So once we finally finished icing and decorating them, I put them in the Tupperware and sacked out without thinking of putting them in the fridge. The next morning I woke up to find half of them with their tops gone. The humidity had caused the icing and decoration to slide off and leave a pool of icing around every cupcake. I told myself that the kids won't care, they just want cake to make myself feel better.

So apparently we didn't have enough stuff planned in one day so we squeezed in soccer practice right before the party. I stopped by the house to pick up the cupcakes and ice cream. We get to the church and then I noticed that I left half of the topless cupcakes at home. The party is about to start in 15 minutes and Justin makes a mad dash to Sam's to get some cupcakes. Tell me again why didn't I just do that in the beginning? Besides the cupcakes debacle the party went well and Nolan had so much fun. We had a bat race, baseball pinata, and my dad looked like a baseball game vendor shouting "hot dogs" to everyone like a real baseball game.

I don't think he cared about the cupcakes, just that they tasted good!

Pop and Gram got him his own Louisville slugger made with his name inscribed!

Party favors with peanuts, Cracker Jacks, and Baby Ruth candy insideI think Campbell thought it was his party.