A mama with ideas...

I like to think that I care about the environment... I do my bit by recycling (at least the bits that get collected at the curbside), try to turn off lights, buy recycled paper, use my own shopping bags and don't let the tap run when brushing my teeth. I used washable cotton diapers with my boys for part of the time. I read labels in the supermarket and always try to go with biodegradable, natural and the least-packaged items. I buy organic pesticide-free food when my budget allows and try to eat meat-free meals once a week. All of these small measures salve my conscience a little, but in reality I know that my family and I are some of the people doing most harm to our planet.

We live in a massive (air conditioned) house with far more space than we need. We have a lovely big garden with a lawn that is watered throughout the summer and sprayed to keep the pests away. I drive a mini-van that averages about 20 miles to the gallon (if I'm lucky). And we own countless material objects, all manufactured and shipped from locations that have a huge impact on the Earth. I wish I had the strength of character and resolve needed to live a more modest, less wasteful and environmentally friendly lifestyle, but this has become even harder since moving from the UK to the USA. I swear my carbon footprint has quadrupled since living in Houston... it's not just the hats, hair & trucks that are bigger in Texas!

So it is with mixed feelings that I think about the forthcoming Earth Day on April 22nd. I think it is very important to value and celebrate our wonderful planet. It's even more important to teach our kids about managing resources with care. However, it is hard to do so without feeling a bit of a hypocrite... especially when you drop your child to school in a 3.5 litre V8 engine gas-guzzling car!

Regardless of my inner turmoil, the 7-year old Big One is keen to join in the Earth Day celebrations and demonstrate his 'green' credentials.   So I decided to mark the occasion with some sweet treats to try to show how beautiful and complex our planet is, even in minature!  A cake ball homage to the Earth!




You will need...

• A cake (either made from a packet mix or your own favourite recipe) crumbled
• Some frosting
• Whoppers or Maltesers
• Blue Candy melts
• Green Candy melts
• A small paintbrush reserved for use with food only

Then take a walnut sized piece of the dough and flatten into a disc shape in the palm of your hand.






Place a whopper in the middle and wrap the 'dough' around it, rolling to form a ball shape.  Put the balls on a lined baking tray and refridgerate overnight or for a few hours at least.














Once chilled, dip each ball in melted blue candy wafers (again, if you haven't made cake pops or cake balls before read this tutorial first).  Leave on a sheet of baking parchment to harden.  Don't worry about excess at the base as you can cut this away with a knife once set.









Melt a few green candy wafers in egg cups or small cups.  I used two different shades of green.  Once melted, use a food-only paintbrush to 'paint' the land onto the globe with the green candy.





As you can see here, I have tried to copy the outlines of the major continents... Europe, Africa & the Middle East here....





... North & South America here...





And inside is revealed the inner & outer core of the Earth... can you tell I studied Geology at University?!

The Big One has just turned 7... where did that time go?!  And like most 7 year olds he has a pretty good idea of what he likes!  After my flat refusal to entertain the idea of a party at a certain Fromage Eating Mouse's Arcade  (a.k.a. Hell on Earth), he came up with the idea of having a Raptor party.  I initially thought he meant dinosaurs, but thanks to the Kratts brothers on PBS kids,  my budding zoologist meant birds of prey!  Apparently (according to the Big One at least)... "one can identify a raptor by three key features:  they have the forward facing eyes of a predator, sharp talons and hooked beaks".  That's me told!
So once I'd figured that out, I was then a little stumped with how to fulfill this wish.  Thankfully, the wonderful Houston Audubon Society came to the rescue in the form of their Outreach program and their marvelous birds.  We were very privileged to have Cairo (a peregrine falcon) and Tskili (a great horned owl) visit us at our home for the Big One's party!  Both are rescue birds that were unable to be returned to the wild and were absolutely enchanting!  Read below for more ideas for this theme...

Birthday Cake




I created a peregrine falcon birthday cake using a dove shaped cake pan (click on the image below to buy one).  I used my vegan chocolate cake recipe as it is very fail safe for this sort of project and one batch filled the cake pan perfectly.  This gave me a basic bird shape without too much effort.  I then carved the beak slightly to make it a bit hooked and removed the olive branch from the dove's mouth.  A thin smear of chocolate buttercream icing and then a layer of white fondant icing and I was given a blank canvas to paint (literally).  Using some extra fondant I shaped some legs with taloned feet.  Then I used Wilton color dust in brown, yellow, white and some Wilton Dab-n-Color in black, mixed with a little clear vanilla essence (although you can use any clear alchohol) to create the palette of colors I needed and I painted the fondant as if with watercolor paints!



      









Birthday Party Food
The party was held mid-afternoon and so I only provided a small finger buffet of snacks and treats.  With a bird theme for the party, I decided on the following:

• Birds nests
• Grapes
• Finger sandwiches
• Owl cake pops (see my earlier post about cake pops for more information on how to make these)

The birds nests were simple chocolate rice crispy treats with chocolate mini eggs on top.





I displayed the grapes in a large glass bowl with plastic eggs.





The owl pops I decorated with ears made from mini choc chips stuck to the pop before coating in chocolate, light brown fondant icing for the tummy, a yellow moon shaped cupcake sprinkle for the beak and two white chocolate wafers (buttons) for the eyes.  I wrapped each one individually in a cello bag tied with an owl patterned ribbon from the discount bin at my local craft store!  I displayed these in a Styrofoam disc covered in tissue paper.





Goody Bags
I used plain 'natural' colored, paper goody bags with raffia handles for the goody bags and simply printed out labels with a thank you message and picture of a peregrine falcon to stick on the front.




For Raptor themed goody bag fillers I used:

• Cardboard fold up binoculars for a bit of backyard bird watching!
• Bird stickers
• Owl bookmark/reading guides
• Resealable owl sandwich bags filled with 'owl food' (pretzels, chocolate raisins, chex etc...)
• Anti-gravity eagles (click picture below)...

Party Activities/Games

The presentation of the birds lasted an hour and kept all 12 children (and their parents) perfectly enthralled and entertained!







After that the children had a quick snack and a game of pin the beak on the owl!





I gave out raptor/birds of prey coloring books and dollar store crayon packs to the winners (click on image below)...




And the best bit was seeing the smile on the Big One's face when he got to have his picture taken with Cairo the Peregrine Falcon!

Haven't got time to make cake pops?  Left it to the last minute?  Well, that's what I did yesterday.  We had 40 minutes between getting home from school until we were due to leave to go to a friend's for a Halloween pre-trick-or-treating feast!  And I had promised to make treats for the kids.  Ooops!

Not to be deterred, I decided that I could improvise a cake pop out of a kids' energy snack bar!  The ones I have are a bit like a flapjack or brownie... dense and chewy oatmeal based bars and very tasty!  Perfect for molding onto a stick and covering in chocolate!  Luckily, I had a pot of newly acquired Halloween sprinkles that were perfect for accessorizing the face!

You will need...

• A ready made snack that will firmly fix onto a lollipop stick.  I used Clif energy snack bars, but you could adapt all sorts of things... rice krispie bars, even double stuffed Oreos would probably work!
• Lollipop sticks.
• Chocolate chips or candy wafers like Wilton Candy Melts.
• Sprinkles or candy to decorate... I had some brilliant candy eyes that I have been desperate to try out on a project!

This is a very easy project.  Simply fix a lollipop stick into the snack bar, cookie or brownie and then decorate as for a cake pop.  My earlier post with the Jack O Lantern cake pops I made for a school bake sale has detailed instructions on how to do this!  I cut my energy bars in half to make them the perfect size.  I thought that the rectangular shape was just crying out to be turned into Frankenstein's Monster, but it would also make a fabulous Sponge Bob Squarepants!  Because the texture of the energy bar is quite pliable I guess I could have rolled it into a ball if needed.  I used green candy melts to cover the whole snack.  Then  created the monster's face with a selection of seasonal candy sprinkles... candy eyes, bats for the eyebrows, tombstones for neck bolts and a moon for the mouth. I then dipped the very top in dark chocolate and used a spare lollipop stick to create the look of hair.

This took about 20 minutes in total... and another 5 minutes in the refrigerator to chill!  A fabulous super-quick treat in under half an hour!

I posted last week about the nightmare that is .... the PTA Bake Sale.  Bah!  To be fair it's not just the Bake Sale... just about anything to do with the PTA is a minefield of potential social faux pas, especially as I'm new to it all!  I'm hoping that by the time the Shouty One & Chubby Cheeks one are at school, I will have learned to say no (and to mean it) when faced by the Stepford Mothers and their clipboards! In the meantime, I will just suck it up, and attempt to beat them at their own game!  Hence, Operation Cake Pop-a-licious was in full swing this weekend!


Earlier in the week, I made a delicious Vegan Chocolate cake.  Under normal conditions, cake in our house lasts about as long as a proton in the Hadron Particle Accelerator at Cern!  However, devious Mummy knew she was making cake pops at the weekend so hid the cake in a lunch box at the back of the fridge!  Hurrah... hungry plague of locust-children 0.  Mummy 1.


I decided to continue with the Vegan theme, purely because I'm good friends with a family of vegans whose kids normally have to give the Bake Sale table a wide berth!

For basic cake pops, you will need...

• Cake.  Any type. I had 3/4 of the Vegan Chocolate Cake mentioned before.
• Frosting.  Any buttercream textured type of frosting will do.  I made my own chocolate buttercream with 2oz vegan buttery spread (you can use butter), 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder and 2 tablespoons soy milk (you can use normal cow's milk).
• Chocolate chips or candy melts.  I used two different sorts:  Wilton's orange Candy Melts for the Jack O' Lantern cake pops (this isn't dairy free though) and Ghiradelli's Semi-sweet chocolate chips (these ARE dairy free!).
• Sprinkles or candy to decorate (optional).
• Vegetable oil or vegetable shortening (Crisco).
• Lollipop sticks.  In actual fact, these are optional,too!  You can skip the stick part and just create cake balls... they can be displayed in mini paper cupcake cases if you like!
• Also optional:  a styrofoam sheet is really helpful to keep the cake pops upright while the harden and for decorating, however, you can just use a cup to stand them up in!

As these were going to be displayed on a Bake Sale table, I also bought:

• Small clear cellophane treat bags.
• Decorative ribbon.
• Styrofoam circles.

First things first...

Fact 1:  You cannot make cake pops all in one go.  They take time.  The actual amount of effort isn't that much, but you do need to leave them to chill in the fridge for lengths of time, so taking that into account when planning for an event is essential.  So two days prior to the Fall Festival I made a start on the cake pops!

Fact 2:  You will get messy hands.  You can't make cake pops without getting sticky!

In a large bowl, crumble the cake with your hands into a fine even texture.  Then adding a little bit at a time start to mix in the frosting, again with your hands.  I can't tell you how much frosting to use as it depends on how moist/dry your cake is.  The aim is to create a dough out of the cake crumbs, using the frosting to bind it together.  For the three quarters of the Vegan cake I used, I needed about 3/4 of the buttercream quantity I made (see recipe above).  As I've stated, you will get messy hands!





Once the cake crumbs and frosting mix resembles a large ball of pliable (but not wet) dough you can start to form your cake balls.  In preparation, line a large cookie sheet with foil or baking parchment.  Then you need to pinch out a small amount of dough and roll it in the palms of your hands to an even ball shape the size of a walnut.  The perfect gadget for speeding up this process and standardising the size and shape of your balls is a set of meatball tongs!  Space the balls out evenly on the cookie sheet, cover loosely with plastic wrap/clingfilm and chill in the fridge overnight.


The next step is to fix the lollipop sticks in place and to coat the cake pops in a chocolate coating.  You will need to melt your chocolate chips (or candy melts).  There are several important things to remember when melting chocolate...

1. Do not overheat it. It will seize up.  With that in mind there are several techniques which help to melt the chocolate without it going wrong.  You can melt chocolate in a metal bowl over a pan of simmering water (this is called double boiler or bain marie method), but even the steam can make the chocolate overheat.  You will need to keep stirring the chocolate chips and remove from the heat before they all look melted.  Keep stirring and the internal heat will finish the job.  You can also melt chocolate in a microwave, but make sure you use the 50% power setting and do it gradually!  Start with 1 minute and stir afterwards.  Then in 15 second blasts (again at 50%) until fully melted.  Don't overdo it though!
2. Do not allow water to come into contact with the chocolate.  It will seize up and become all hard and lumpy.  This is why I prefer to melt in the microwave rather than using a bain marie.  Condensation and steam from the double boiler technique can ruin a whole batch of chocolate!  Another thing to note is if you are planning to colour white chocolate... you will need to buy colouring gels specific to candy/chocolate making, as the water based ones will cause the chocolate to go lumpy!  
3. If your chocolate does seize up, you can sometimes rescue it by adding a tablespoon of vegetable oil or vegetable shortening (Crisco).  I add this when making cake pops anyway, as it makes the chocolate runnier and easier to work with.

For cake pop making it's a good idea to melt your chocolate in a tall, narrow container like a cup rather than a shallow bowl.  That way you get a deep layer without using loads of chocolate.  You can always melt more if needed.



Your cake pop balls should be nice and firm straight from the fridge, but may have flat bottoms where they've sat on the cookie tray.  I like to stick the stick in the flat side.  Dip the lollipop stick in the melted chocolate so that the last 1/2 inch is coated, then push it gently into the cake ball so that it goes to the middle.  This is where the styrofoam sheet comes in handy, as you can then push the lollipop stick into the foam to wait for the chocolate to harden.  Fix all the sticks in the pops.



Then you will need to coat the cake pop in the chocolate or melted candy.  Gently plunge the cake ball into the chocolate.  Don't move it around or attempt to twirl it, as your ball will likely come off the stick.  If the chocolate doesn't cover the whole ball, gently rock the cake pop from side to side until the none of the cake is visible.  Gently pull the cake ball out of the chocolate, and then carefully tap the stick against the side of the bowl while turning the stick.  This should get rid of any excess chocolate and leave you with an even coating.  If you are planning to cover the cake pops in sprinkles or decorate with candy, now is the time to do so, before it sets.



Place the cake pop stick back in the styrofoam and chill to set.

If you want to decorate the cake pop with a face (like the Jack O' Lanterns) you can melt a small amount of candy in a piping bag (in the microwave is easiest), and then you can decorate with your chosen design.  This does take a steady hand and I found it quite frustrating!  So next time, I'm planning to try some candy writers (pens specifically designed for writing on candy/chocolate).



I finished my cake pops off by putting a little cellophane bag over each one and tying with a ribbon!  Bake Sale ladies eat your heart out!



So... were they a success!?  I'm delighted to report, that they were a resounding one... yay!  So much so, that I ended up having to shell out $6 for my brood to get one each!  All to a good cause though, right?!