Happy National Donut Day!

Since there is no way I can trust any stores to have corn free donuts we decided to make our own. And let me tell you, they were amazing!!!!! We tried something new and did filled donuts! Evie as she was eating them kept saying we should open a bakery.

Starting to fry them

Flipped and cooking on the second side. 

Isn't it beautiful?

Topped with chocolate and ready to fill!

Damen really was enjoying it :-)

Doesn't it look wonderful?

We ended up making 18, why? Because we're crazy. Nathan brought a few into work, and we actually made them yesterday so the kids had them after dinner and then again for breakfast. They were much better fresh, but not bad this morning. The white chocolate covered ones we were going to fill with homemade strawberry jam I had made, but no one ended up being interested in that. So I've added some chocolate to the vanilla fill and we'll put that inside instead :-) 

Easter! Or was it April Fools Day?

I hope everyone had a blessed Easter! We had some people over from church and enjoyed lively conversation with some yummy tacos and homemade tortillas! Since Easter was also April Fools Day my girls wanted to play an April Fools Day trick on their friends. Hannah came up with the plan and we helped them execute it.....although it wasn't nearly as fun as they had hoped....maybe next time....
Anyway, Hannah had the idea to make bitter chocolate candies to give out to her friends. So we bought a bunny mold and made some 90% cocoa chocolate bunnies.

Nathan didn't want to just give people the 90% chocolate bunnies without some sort of note or something so he came up with this:

To go with the chocolate bunnies we gave semi-sweet chocolate crosses for people to enjoy. The next time Easter is on April Fools Day in 11 years I told the girls they can just do the 90% cocoa for their friends....maybe without the notes :-)

Corn Free Marshmallows!

We had a bonfire recently and the kids were all having marshmallows, so I decide to see what I could find in regards to corn free marshmallows. I haven't tried to roast them yet, but they are super yummy plain. I used this recipe and modified it to have cocoa on the outside instead of powdered sugar (since most powdered sugar has corn in it). They were delicious!

They were gone within a day. 

Doughnuts just because.....

You know I'm weird and a bit crazy. So it probably doesn't surprise you if I tell you one day I woke up and decided to make doughnuts. Instead of getting out the deep fryer I just made them in a skillet. The dough is supposed to chill, which I didn't do, so they didn't hold shape while at all, but they tasted good and without chilling them it didn't take too long to make them :-)

Really who wouldn't want a chocolate frosted chocolate cake doughnut?

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

My attempt at something green......

It's angel food cake......

And it totally fell in the oven and then fell out of the pan while cooling....which is not supposed to happen!

4 years old!

Last Wednesday was the boys birthday! They went out for breakfast with Dad, got song to at their library time, had yummy cake and ice cream after dinner and then had more cake on Thursday at AWANA with their friends.

 The cake......I haven't made a teddy bear cake in forever! So I figured it was about time for the boys to enjoy it. They loved it. Kaleb had requested a chocolate chip cake. I was able to do a chocolate chip pound cake and Damen wanted chocolate frosting, so that's what he got.

Look at me so I can take a picture!

Someone cheated and started blowing while the other was looking at me for the picture!

What happened?

Now Kaleb gets to do it finally!

We went for a walk in the afternoon, and then came home and the boys wanted to sled. Why not? Who knows how much longer the snow will last. It was 40 degrees, so who needs a coat and gloves right?

They had a blast sledding!

Evie enjoying the "warm" weather as well

fudge making 2013

Last Friday Nathan took the day off of work to do our annual fudge making! We won't talk about my attempt and complete failure to make some of the batches on Thursday, so we'd have less to do on Friday. We'll just talk about the fact that we made 60 lbs of fudge on Friday!

Here are some of the ingredient. Those are the base, there were many other things used as well. 

This is Tim, he came over Friday night to help make/pack the fudge. He's a co-op at Nathan's company and goes to RIT and is on servant team for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship there. We were very involved with IV when Nathan went to RIT. Tim was also home schooled, so it's been fun having him over and getting to know him. 

 

22 packed boxes!

I totally forgot to take pictures of the kids helping with the fudge. All of the kids helped stir and did quite well. I took the boys to the library (because Fridays are their library story hour day) and Nathan said the girls were a huge help and did almost all the stirring on the batch he made while I was out. The boys thought stirring was the best thing every and now the ask to stir everything and anything I'm making. We changed up the flavors a bit this year (as we've done every year) and ended up with some color in our fudge (mainly because I didn't think to buy enough white, white chocolate melting wafers), red peppermint, green Oreo, at least they were Christmas colors right? :-) We also had a record fast delivery, my Aunt and Uncle in Albany got their Sunday afternoon! Watching the tracking on the packages was fun, as weird things happen with your mail. My sister Becca's package went out for delivery Monday morning, but didn't actually get delivered until Tuesday.....I guess it got lost in the truck. And the slowest package was to SC, but it made it to CA by Monday. Interesting how mail travels.

Cup cakes for church

On Saturday we went to an open wedding at church so the girls could have a chance to see what a wedding is like as they prepare to be in Aunt Rachel's wedding in December. They did a super job sitting through and hour and a half long ceremony. And thanks to my parents for putting up with us going to that too! In between the wedding which we got home from around 3:15 pm and going out to dinner we made cup cakes and an ice cream cake! It was a busy kitchen. Evie wanted to bring vanilla cup cakes with vanilla frosting and rainbow sprinkles to church. I thought that was a good way to help her celebrate, so that's what we did. I made the cup cakes while she was having quiet time. And then she helped to decorate them!

She'd carefully dip them in the sprinkles...

And took great care in putting them back on the rack gently!

Don't they look super yummy?!

Rainbow Waffles

We like waffles in our house. I make them a lot. Evie would have waffles every morning if she could. Friday Nathan was looking at random things online and found a rainbow waffle, so we decided to try it Saturday morning.

 Evie mixing in the blue coloring

Here are all the colors!

And the waffles!

We found you had to cook them very lightly, but I thought they turned out pretty good for a first attempt. 

Fried goodness

 Last night we had some friends over and did fried food. Chicken, green beans (they were really good!), potatoes, sweet potatoes. It was yummy. We had fun, the girls had fun, it was all good. I'm sorry, I have no pictures of that yummy food. But Nathan had the brilliant idea this morning, since the fryer was out to do breakfast foods. So we did some apple fritters, anyone who knows Nathan knows he is crazy about fritters. The fritters were good, but they get soggy, I think it's because of the fresh apples, they produce too much moister or something.....I'm not sure. But I've never been satisfied with how the fritters turn out (we've tried it once before). That was not the brilliance though, the brilliant idea was donuts! We made chocolate donuts. Supper yummy chocolate donuts.

 The girls helped roll out the donuts and cut them out

 Here's our fritters and our first test donut

 The girls enjoyed watching Daddy fry the donuts.

Here are a bunch of the donut holes frying. 

 We made lots of fun shaped donuts, starts, hearts and circles.

 And of course if your donuts are those shapes, then your donut holes will be that shape too! :-) We coated them in powered sugar for a glaze.

Then we added a chocolate glaze and sprinkles! Doesn't that look yummy?!!?

 Here's more of them. Don't they look good?

 And of course the girls had to try some! Super yummy!

Red Velvet Cake

It was my friend Keelia's birthday today and she invited us over for dinner. Of course I had to bring the cake :-) She requested red velvet cake, I had never made that before. I found a great recipe and it was super yummy!

Happy Birthday Keelia!

Doesn't that look yummy?

Dinosaurs for breakfast!

 Yes, we ate dinosaurs for breakfast this morning and they were very good. My mother in-law had given me these dinosaurs several years ago (Thanks Mom!) and I don't think I processed that they were more than just cookie cutters. They are two in one, cookie cutters AND pancake molds! So we had dinosaur pancakes for breakfast. The girls enjoyed them and Nathan perfected the cooking process for them. Here are some pictures, and yes, yes they do have chocolate chips in them!

 

P.S. In other exciting news for the day Hannah read the entire Bible story tonight :-) Only needing help on a few words. 

Yummy Sandwiches

Saturday Lyn stopped by for a visit since she was in town. As a treat we made ice cream sandwiches, YUM! Brian and Janie gave us ice cream sandwich makers for Christmas and this was our first time to make them. Nathan is addicted.

Cake balls

I finished up the frosting. What did I do with the rest of it? I made a cookie cake, which I didn't get a picture of, and then I made some cake balls. I made cake balls with mint frosting, chocolate cake and white chocolate on the outside. Nathan thought making mint icing was going to wreck them, but I thought they turned out really good.

Hannah was a big help in rolling and decorating the balls