Farm Field Trip

(43 Months)

We had so much fun on the farm!  This was our first trip to a farm and they enjoyed every part of it!  Field trips are so much fun!  We love homeschool preschool, especially when Buddy and My Jeanine comes to visit.

Introducing the Round Up Gang: Grandma and Buddy; My sister and Wild One; and Me with Little Miss.

 Buddy was so excited about petting the bunnies.  Isn't he a cutie?

Wild One loved how soft the rabbits were.  I think it was her cousin's and brother's laughter that finally convinced Little Miss to pet the bunnies.

No trip to a farm would be complete without a hay ride.

Have you ever caught a chicken?

 Grandpa did!

 So, of course Grandpa's Little Mini Me had to as well.

 It's time to milk the cows.  Any volunteers?  Look at Buddy raising his hand and walking forward!

Thank you Buddy and My Jeanine for flying down for the weekend.  We had so much fun.  We love you and miss you so much.

Delicious Beet Cupcakes, Cakes and Pancakes

(43 Months)

We LOVE roasted beets!  Ok, let me clarify.  We love baking with roasted beets.  If you haven't tried baking with roasted beets, you are missing out on some delicious and guilt-free desserts, muffins and pancakes.

Beets are a top ten superfood that are high in potassium, folic acid and fiber.  When they are baked into a sweet treat, they are undetectable!  Seriously, it's true.  I didn't believe it either, until I tried my first beet recipe.  Now, we bake with beets at least once a week!  Click here to learn how to roast beets.

Little Miss and Wild One love helping me bake sweet treats.  They help with every part of the recipe.  Cracking eggs, pouring milk, measuring out wet and dry ingredients, mixing.  They even have created their own recipes, by adding in an unexpected goody into the batter- peanut butter, chocolate chips, bananas, blueberries.  I love having them in the kitchen with me, even though each recipe takes twice as long to make and the mess is always bigger than I expected, I love having them on their stools with me.  They talk about it for days, narrating each part that they participated in.  They recreate the memory in their play kitchen.  I know that they won't remember this when they are older, but I will always cherish these moments.

All of the following recipes, they have helped make and passed their taste-test (we only use a pass/fail method of determining if a recipe is a keeper or not, no maybes here).  These are all kid-friendly baking recipes.

Here are our favorite roasted beet recipes.  They all have either whole wheat pastry flour or a blend of whole wheat and unbleached all purpose flour.  Some use non-fat Greek yogurt or applesauce in place of butter and oil.  All are delicious and practically guilt-free.

Fudgy Beet Cupcakes - we substituted dark chocolate
almond milk for the vanilla almond milk, and threw in
1/3 cup of melted bittersweet chocolate chips with the
wet ingredients.  The result was a beautifully rich,
glossy cupcake.  Light and yet fudgy.








Double Dark Chocolate Chip Muffins
from Pinch My Salt - these have noticeably
more chocolate, but ooooohhh they are so
delicious.  We even made this into a bundt
cake and it was devoured within a few days.





Red Beet Pancakes - in our home we call
these Pinkalicious Pancakes.  These pancakes
are definitely on their Top Five Pancakes list.
Sweet and gorgeous in color.  One batch will
make enough to feed your family, plus have
enough to freeze.

Red Velvet Cupcakes - we altered this recipe,
replacing the all-purpose flour with whole wheat
pastry flour.  We also only used 1 3/4 cups of flour,
and substituted 1/4 cup of unsweetened dark cocoa
powder.  Instead of canola oil, we have found that
unsweetened applesauce and non-fat Greek yogurt
both produce a light and fluffy cupcake.

Dark Chocolate Cake - this is sweetened with real maple
syrup and raw honey.  We never have light olive oil in the
pantry, so we substituted unsweetened applesauce.  This
was fantastic!








If you have never baked with roasted beets, try one of the above recipes and you'll be converted into a beet lover.  And when the kids ask for another cupcake or slice of cake, you can feel good about saying "yes".

Easy Baked Jack-O-Lanterns

(43 Months)

I love Autumn.  Crisp Fall apples, the mouthwatering scent of pumpkin bread baking, pumpkin apple muffins, pumpkin waffles, pumpkin spice lattes...  mmm...  Last year we were lucky enough to visit my sister's family during the Fall (I miss you all so much).  They took us out to an apple orchard and the three little ones picked their first apples off a tree together.  Little Miss and Wild One still talk about how much fun they had with their aunt, uncle and cousin "Buddy".  Here's our adventure.  Look how little they were.

Buddy and my brother-in-law.  I miss you!!!!!!!!

I've been wanting to make baked cotton balls for a few weeks now.  When I saw Asia's baked Jack-o-lantern on Fun At Home With Kids, I knew we were going to get messy in the kitchen soon.  This is an easy and fun project for the kids to work on.  Little Miss and Wild One helped mix the flour and water solution, combined the colors, and squished the flour solution onto the cotton balls.

After Wild One finished with the orange cotton balls, he was done.  He said he didn't want to get his hands dirty anymore.  Oh well.  Little Miss kept working at it, she loved that she was working on this almost independently, with no help from Mommy.  By the way, did you notice in the above pictures that she is tilting the mixing bowl as she mixes?  That's how we mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients when we are making batter for cupcakes, muffins, pancakes, waffles.....  She even said, "we lift the bowl to mix the wet into dry ingredients."  I love that girl!

Here's the recipe:
We first made a huge batch of plain colored flour/water solution in a large bowl.  For the two Jack-o-lanterns we used 3 cups of bleached all-purpose flour and about 2 1/2 cups of water.  Next, we whisked the flour into the water until there were no more lumps (it's going to be thick and goopy, perfect for little ones hands to squish).  Then, we took about 1/2 cup of the faux paint for the green cotton balls and ladled it into a small mixing bowl.  We used about 3/4 cup for the black cotton balls and ladled it into a medium mixing bowl.  We left the remaining flour/water in the large bowl for the orange cotton balls.  I love how Asia incorporated scent to her faux paint.  We mixed in 1/2 tsp of cinnamon to the black paint* and 1 tsp of pumpkin spice to the orange paint, before adding in the cotton balls.  Little Miss and Wild One loved the delicious scents. Bake it at 300 degrees for 80 minutes (on tinfoil for easy cleanup).  It took our creation about twenty minutes to cool down.  This was perfect timing to work on before lunch, then let it bake and cool to be ready for after nap (if they nap).

With the left over faux paint, we added in some extra cotton balls to smash!  I'm so glad we did, because they had so much fun using the hammers to whack the baked cotton balls.  They were so surprised that the soft, fluffy cotton balls baked into almost a rock!  Then, I told them that we are going to go outside with some hammers and smash them.  "Can I use Daddy's hammer?"  Once that first baked cotton ball was smashed and they saw that the inside was still white and fluffy, they were hooked.  They began smashing one after another.  "Mommy, can we do more please?" Even Grandpa got into the act.  "Mommy, can we do more please?"

*I first tried making the flour/water black with food dye.  It kept turning green or brown.  After a few tries, I remembered that I had black liquid watercolor.  We tried that and it still didn't turn out black.  However, after it was finished baking it did turn black.

The kidabunks loved this project.  Little Miss loved every part of it, mixing, squishing, creating and smashing.  Wild One's favorite part was mixing and smashing.  I love that I have a beautiful keepsake that will hopefully last past this season.  They already asked if we can make more (baked) cotton balls.  Fun and easy.