Browsing the blog archives for May, 2013.

Nutella Ice Pops

California, Domestic, Kids

The short week after a holiday weekend is usually pretty laid back, but I’m hyped for Friday anyway. This week started off really slow, spending Monday with my husband and our littles in our new backyard plotting what we want to plant and what else we want to do with the space. Tuesday my homie Jillian and I packed up our littles and hit the thrift shop. I swear on a stack of Teen Vogues that when we got in her car, this song was playing. Obvy, the universe wanted us to go thrifting. It was an excellent trip! Wee One #2 got 3 dresses and a pair of pink camo pj pants and Wee One #3 found 4 adorable dresses (2 even had sparkles). We also ended up with a hysterical purple piggy bank that I hope we keep forever (read: Dear Wee One #3, please don’t break this epic find), some cute glasses and a crazy noisy car toy they both love. Of course they love it. Why wouldn’t they? I was a little bummed to not find any sweet ironic tshirts for Wee One #1 and though I did find some really silly sleepwear to scare my husband with, in the end closet space for clothes I will actually wear won and I didn’t buy it – though I did get a photie of it! It’s a pink zebra adult sized onesie! There are even little hearts on it! Look!! Now that I see it on the blog, it looks like the girl version of the Batman onesie in the Macklemore / Ryan Lewis video and I regret not buying it, if not for me then for my girl Vanessa. If you’re reading this Nessa, I’m going back for it! <3

Nutella Ice Pops

Wednesday we ditched our plans to go out in favor of hanging out at the pool and making these ice pops (and a few other recipes we froze and ate in record time thanks to my Fastpop Popsicle Maker). It’s so rad. I just store it in my freezer, so when I want to use it, it’s ready for me. Usually, ice pops are ready in less than 10 minutes with this, but dairy-based ice pops take a bit longer, which is kind of a no brainer if you’ve ever made ice pops before.

Nutella Ice Pops

This recipe isn’t even a recipe really. It was just 1 cup of milk and 1/3 cup Nutella. Blend till totally combined and pour into your ice pop molds. Or you can even use Dixie cups and just peel the paper off when they’re frozen and ready to serve.

Another variation we had luck with was 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup Cool Whip and 1/3 cup Nutella. Equally amazing.

Nutella Ice Pops

After we devoured these, we made a bunch of fruity ones! I will post last day of school pictures of all of them next week even though technically today was Wee One #1’s last day. Today was also officially the last dance class for the Tiny Tots team for their month-long summer break and my girls were pretty hyped about it. I mean Wee One #3 was rocking 3 ponytails and one stemmed from a french braid. During class today, she was hilariously distracted and really highlighted her kitten-like attention span. I found myself saying things like ‘you have to listen to Miss Alex, come on point your toes / spin / open your arms’ etc. So I asked her if she wanted to come back to the class and she said she just wanted to watch her sister or go home and be with Daddy. Ok so, this is when I step back and remember that no matter how adorable she is in a tutu, she’s 4 years old and that if she isn’t into it, she isn’t into it and I will not push her to do something just because it’s cute. Truthfully, she’s into dancing around in her outfit and she likes the studio because the music is loud and there is so much more space – she’s just not big on the whole ‘class’ aspect of it. 😉 I think we’ll take a break for six months and see what happens.

Nutella Ice Pops

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Pioneer Woman Dr Pepper Shredded Pork

Domestic

I love me some Ree Drummond (aka The Pioneer Woman), I love her too much to post recipes from her book on my blog – hoooowever, she has posted some recipes from her book on her blog and I feel comfortable sharing those. Not all of them, so you’ll have to buy her cookbook if you want to make her roasted cauliflower – which you should absolutely do!

This recipe, for a slooooow cooked shredded pork that will make your home smell alarmingly good. I mean that – alarmingly good. Especially if you’re in and out of the kitchen or if you go outside to play in the yard and then you come in – zomg so so good. Kind of like when you cook down stew all day, but times about eleventy billion.

Pioneer Woman Dr Pepper Shredded Pork

Dr Pepper Shredded Pork via Pioneer Woman

1 whole large onion
1 whole pork shoulder (5 – 7 lbs)
salt & pepper
1 11 oz can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (or whatever chilies you can find in sauce you like)
2 cans Dr. Pepper
2 tablespoons brown sugar

I couldn’t find the chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, but being that I live in Southern California I’m sure it’s just because I only looked in one place and then made the executive decision to just use a can of green chilies in some other kind of sauce because I just wanted to cook this crazy concoction already. Ahem. So, I did.

This an an all day situation, but thankfully it requires very little babysitting. Start by cutting an onion into quarters and break the layers apart a bit. Lay them on the bottom of your pan. Salt and pepper the roast and plunk that on top of the onions. Now empty the can of peppers or chilies onto the roast. Then the Dr Pepper. Then the brown sugar (add this into the liquid and not just on top of the roast).

Now pop it in the oven for somewhere in the neighborhood of six-eight hours. I checked on mine at the 5 hour mark and turned it on it’s side. Then again at 6 hours and turned it again. At 7 hours it started to fall apart perfectly.

You can use this meat for whatever you can think of. I served this on sesame buns with a rice pilaf and green beans. 🙂 A serious hit with all 5.

Pioneer Woman Dr Pepper Shredded Pork
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Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

Domestic

On Monday, I shared photies of my Memorial Day weekend, which included two really serious cakes. Yesterday, I posted about the Crumble Jumble Cake, so today here is the second cake we brought with us to the barbecue. It’s pretty epic, but def in a good way. It is not only that winning combination of chocolate and peanut butter, but it is also in just the right ratio, not too much of either. The frosting really puts it over the edge. You’re welcome. 🙂

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake – via The Farm Girl

Cake:
1 box chocolate fudge cake mix
1 small box chocolate instant pudding
1/3 cup oil
1/3 cup water
5 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp vanilla
1 cup peanut butter chips
Frosting:
1 cup butter
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
4 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup heavy cream

There’s a lot going on here, I’m not going to lie, but I loved every second of it. You probably will too if you like even half the recipes on this blog. 😉

So first of all, it starts with a cake mix and you KNOW how I feel about those. In this case though it’s used more as an ingredient than a crutch, having said that, if I ever make this again I will try to ditch the mix. Mix everything except the peanut butter chips for 2-3 minutes, then stir in the peanut butter chips and pour into two greased 9″ pans. Bake at 350 for 40 minutes. Cool 10 minutes before removing from pans and then completely cool on a wire rack before icing!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake

The frosting is wonderfully simple. Cream the butter and peanut butter until smooth then add the salt, vanilla, whipping cream and 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar at a time until thick enough to spread. I placed one cake on the platter, iced the top of it, added the second cake and then iced that as well. I made this to impress my girl Jillian’s husband and I heard he liked peanut butter cups, so I arranged them around the base of the cake, chopped up the rest of them and sprinkled them on top. Along with a generous helping of Reese’s Pieces!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
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Crumble Jumble Cake with Moonlight Frosting

Domestic, Kids

My littles love to tear it up in the kitchen, and I love to watch them. Sometimes their creations are a little sketchy but they are usually pretty good when they follow a recipe! This recipe is in one of their favorite library books, The Little Bitty Bakery by Leslie Muir and Betsy Lewin.

Essentially, this book is about an elephant baker who bakes all kinds of sweet treats but doesn’t realize until the day is done that she baked right through her birthday and didn’t celebrate it! The mice in her bakery all pitch in and gather crumbs and bits of treats to make her a birthday cake (hilarious how something so unsanitary is adorable in a children’s book). I can’t say for sure if it’s the glitter on the cover, or the sing-song rhyme of the text (here’s an adorable example ‘they scuttled to a huddle / prepared a secret plan / & launched a luscious mission / inside a brioche pan’), but my girls love this book. We first took it out of the library one day last fall when we were exploring libraries outside of our district and we ended up getting library cards in that district that day to take it out (the way the library system is down here is so weird that we actually have library cards in three different districts, even though they are all super close to us).

Since then, we have taken the book out three more times in the other two districts – and renewed again this week. Clearly, I need to just buy this book for them! The recipe for the crumble jumble cake is at the back of the book and was so weird I wasn’t sure it was actually going to work. There are a few mismeasured ingredients (duh, the bakers are 7 and 4), but really, it came out pretty well.

Crumble Jumble Cake

Crumble Jumble Cake via The Little Bitty Bakery

1 stick unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
5 large eggs
1 cup chocolate syrup
1 teaspoon pure vanilla
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch salt
1 cup flour

Moonlight Frosting via The Little Bitty Bakery

1 stick salted butter
3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
6 tablespoons marshmallow fluff
1 teaspoon vanilla
1-2 tablespoons half and half

The cake is fairly simple, first cream the butter and sugar and then beat in the eggs one at a time. Slowly add the chocolate syrup (this is when I stopped and checked the book again because I just couldn’t believe it), vanilla, cinnamon and salt. Bake at 325 for 45 minutes and voila!

The frosting is crazy simple too and it’s especially cute if you’ve read the book. <3 Just whip it all together in your stand up mixer and you're good to go. Once the cake has been baked, cooled and frosted, the real fun begins! This is where the ‘crumble jumble’ aspect comes in.

The real beauty is you can use whatever you know your friends and family will love! I chopped up a few Twix bars, some Butterfinger Bites, M&Ms, mini chocolate chips, broken cookies, jellybeans and chopped walnuts. When I showed up at my girl Jillian’s house with this (and another epic cake I’ll post about tomorrow) her response was ‘omg what are you doing?!’, of course I just replied, ‘I know, right?’ Don’t worry, we didn’t eat it all!

Crumble Jumble Cake Crumble Jumble Cake
Crumble Jumble Cake
Crumble Jumble Cake
Crumble Jumble Cake
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Memorial Day Weekend 2013

California, Domestic, Kids

This is technically our second Memorial Day stateside but it’s our first time actually celebrating it. Last year we were just mostly confused by it because the long weekend in May in Canada is the weekend before. Totally cruel, but this year we were ready! We even wore patriotic colors and the girls and I had patriotic manicures aaaaaand I wore my ridic new Abby Dawn shoes from Just Fab! It also helped that we celebrated with amazing new friends and helped them break in their new BBQ!

Memorial Day Weekend 2013 Memorial Day Weekend 2013
Memorial Day Weekend 2013

Our littles had a dance party (as is the usual when we get together) and they got really into it (which is also the usual when we get together). I’m happy I managed to capture a pigtail action shot!

Memorial Day Weekend 2013

We baked two cakes for the occasion, which should surprise exactly no one, (both recipes coming atcha this week). A Crumble Jumble Cake made by the girls and a Chocolate Peanut Butter cake made by yours truly. I’m a big fan of letting my kids play around in the kitchen with recipes and ideas when inspiration strikes. The recipe the girls used for the cake they made came from a favorite library book, we’re going to have to get them a copy they take it out so often! I will go into it more when I post about it but the recipe was so weird I wasn’t sure it was going to hold together! They are as insane as they look, def must be shared. We each had a piece and then we shared our half of the leftovers with neighbors and they shared their half with grandma!

Memorial Day Weekend 2013 Memorial Day Weekend 2013

The rest of my Saturday went the way I love my Saturday nights to go – watching bad tv with my homie Vanessa and soaking up all the tiny-dog love. Vanessa probably has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known, and thus her house is full of animals. <3 This weekend was even more full than usual because she also boards dogs while their owners are out of town. Busy!

Memorial Day Weekend 2013 Memorial Day Weekend 2013
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Pink Cakesters

Domestic

Yesterday, I posted the Red Velvet Cookies that I made earlier this year and I declared them the 4th cookie of the year. Now that I’ve gone hunting for more cookie recipes that I made this year though, they are at least the 6th cookie and I think these super girly pink cakester-type treats are actually the 5th cookie of the year. I will edit the gallery as I post more cookie recipes from this year. You know, because I know you’re losing sleep over this. 😉

Like yesterday, this recipe is painfully easy and also involves a box cake mix. THE HORROR, I know. Don’t fret, tomorrow my Pioneer Woman cookbook gets here and my girl Sammie and I will be baking up a storm – no cake mixes involved.

The thing with these cookies is that despite the obvious factory-derived flavor from the cake mix, man they are good. I mean, like way too good. I wasn’t even finished my first one before I knew I wanted about 10 more. So naturally I spread them around to my neighbors and we took the rest of them with us to Silly Goose to share with everyone else to get them out of the house. I don’t think I can make these again because yeah, too tasty and unhealthy at the same time. Save these for when you’ve got a crowd to bake for and can be sure to get them out the door (or eaten)!

Pink Cakesters

Pink Cakesters via Six Sisters Stuff

1 box strawberry cake mix
2 eggs
3/4 cup shortening (I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, I used butter)

Ridiculously simple! Preheat to 350, mix the cake mix, eggs and butter. Roll into balls, flatten a bit with a glass dipped in sugar and bake for about 8 minutes. Let them cool for a little before you move them to a wire rack to cool completely and then fill with buttercream.

Pink Cakesters

Pink Cakesters

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Red Velvet Cookies

Domestic

I think these are officially the 5th cookie of the year – baked back in February!

These cookies fall along the lines of ‘shortcut cookies’ that I honestly don’t love to make, but sometimes living in California makes me feel lazy because I’d rather go to the beach and make wonky sand castles with my kids than bake (completely) from scratch. I am trying to get out of that funk, but in the meantime, these shortcut cookies are pretty awesome. Wee One #2 ate way more than she ever usually does and I know I overdid it.

Just a heads up, if you make these from certain brands of cake mix *cough Duncan Hines cough*, you may experience some red pee. Like hours later when you’re at the aquarium with your littlest little and your friend Katie and her oldest little and then you take a bathroom break and come out and go OHMIGOSH Katie I’m dying and then she reminds you how many red velvet cookies you ate and you Google it in the car on the way home to be sure. No? Am I projecting? Ahem. Just try not to eat excessive amounts of these babies and you should be fine. 😉

Red Velvet Cookies

1 box red velvet cake mix
2 tablespoons flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
~1 cup confectioner’s sugar (for rolling)

Pretty standard cake mix cookies, really. Preheat to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Mix together the cake mix and flour. Then stir in the eggs, oil and vanilla. Mix, mix, mix!

Roll into 1″ balls and coat in confectioner’s sugar. Arrange 2″ apart on your baking sheet and flatten with a glass dipped in confectioner’s sugar.

Bake for about 10 minutes (check the first batch at 7 minutes), let them cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before cooling them on a wire rack.

Red Velvet Cookies

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A Wee Update

California, Kids

Do I just gloss over the five weeks I’ve been absent from the blog? Please? No?

Two super exciting things have happened since I last posted (and a whole bunch of other amazing but less newsworthy things)! First, we moved into the bigger, better, all-we-need-in-an-apartment apartment and a little while after that, one of the besties came down for a visit! We stayed within the same apartment complex, we had been literally waiting for this apartment to become available since we decided to stay past our initial plan of six months. Moving to a tiny apartment from our house in the woods was a serious adjustment and while we are still nowhere close to what we had, this is much, much better and is perfect for us right now. The second bathroom and the backyard really put it over for us. Happy campers over here!

Miss Talea visiting was a glorious and way too fast 5 days. We managed to squeeze a whole lot into those five days though! We did the Aquarium of the Pacific, Hollywood, The Le Brea Tar Pits, Santa Monica, Pacific Park, Redondo Pier, Hermosa Pier and a little Corner Bakery and In n Out for good measure. 😉 We also watched some bad tv, drank some local wine and knitted some puffs. A lovely visit, but of course, too short.

The littles and I have been up to all kinds of hilarity with their buddies. In these last five weeks we have celebrated a friend’s 2nd birthday, made sand castles at Redondo Beach, went out for a mama’s night with some of my ladies, celebrated a friend’s 4th birthday, broke in my girl Jennifer’s Slip n Slide, went adventuring with Talea, finally celebrated Wee One #3’s 4th birthday, celebrated Children’s Book Day at our local library, celebrated a friend’s 3rd birthday, checked out a new (to us) park or two, celebrated a friend’s 1st birthday and prepared for Wee One #2’s first big dance show! I’m pooped!!

Much cooking and baking and knitting and crafting and homeschooling have been going on as well! Tomorrow, back to as close to usual as I can get – with some Red Velvet Cookies!

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