FINALLY! A Muffin That Leaves No Crumbs!

(4 Years)

We bake a lot, A LOT,  of muffins.  Wild One and Little Miss love baking muffins, they love the measuring and mixing, and pouring and stirring, and of course the eating and devouring.  Muffins are quick and easy.  They usually require just a few ingredients, and in about a half hour we can go from gathering ingredients to taking the muffins out of the oven.

The only part of muffins that I can't stand, is the mess my kids make while eating them.  Whenever they eat muffins there are crumbs on the table, the chair, hidden in their clothes, under the table and somehow the crumbs travel a good four or five feet away from them!  Well, not these muffins!  No crumbs!  No mess!  No vacuum! 

I found this gluten-free, mess-free, Oatmeal Blueberry Cake recipe in the Eating Well magazine.  The recipe states that you need to let the rolled oats soak in the milk for at least eight hours.  We just poured the oats and unsweetened almond milk in an 8-cup Pyrex measuring cup.  We stirred it a few times.  Covered it with plastic wrap.  Checked on it a little less than an hour later, and all of the milk was already absorbed.  The other adaption we made, was to mix in the frozen blueberries into the batter (instead of just having a few blueberries on top).

These are tasty.  They are dense and hearty.  I would have liked them a little sweeter, the next time we bake these we are going to either increase the amount of maple syrup to 1/2 cup or add a 1/4 cup of sugar to the batter.  I also would have liked a bit more salt.  That's just me though.  The kids devoured them!

The most amazing part of this muffin, isn't that it is very healthy (and the kids love it), it's that it leaves no crumbs!  No vacuum needed!

Swirled Art - Cutting on the Line

(4 Years)

We made swirled Easter Egg decorations (see here) and then we took the scraps of that beautifully marbled paper and turned them into more art!  I couldn't bear to toss the paper, it was so pretty.

First we practiced cutting on a line to make a flower.  Wild One has been in a cutting and pasting mood lately.

He worked hard at trying to cut on the line.

Then he glued down the pieces.  He decided to smear the glue on the paper and then place the pieces of the flower.  It's always interesting to me how they decide to work.

 I love how proud he is of his work.

 

Swirled Art Easter Egg Decorations

(4 Years)

We love playing with shaving cream.  Especially with colored shaving cream!  It's so much fun to squish your hands through the foam.  Last year we made swirled art Easter eggs, the kids and Grandpa were amazed at the beautiful results (see here).  This year, we decided to make swirled art Easter egg decorations for our palm tree.

We used the same process that we used last year (see here) and when the paintings were dry, I cut them into smaller eggs shapes, attached a loop of yarn with tape and then Wild One went around hanging them up!

The process is so simple:

Fill a tray with about an inch of shaving cream.  Add drops of different colored food dye.

Swirl with a chopstick or the end of a paint brush.

Place the construction paper on top of the swirled shaving cream.  Lightly pat it down (making sure that the paper is covered in shaving cream).

Carefully peel the paper from the shaving cream.  Allow to set for a minute or two.  Then scrape off using a window squeegee or a bench scraper or a ruler or a craft stick, wiping off the shaving cream from the scraper each time you swipe.  Allow your creation to dry and then you are ready to decorate!  Save those scraps of pretty paper, I'll show you why tomorrow.

Here are a few more fun ways to play with shaving cream:

Colored Foam with Ice

Hidden Water Beads in Shaving Cream

Fluffy Cloud Dough

Rainbow Bath Paint

Car (Toy) Wash 

We always stock up on shaving cream when it's on sale, but in a pinch we'll pick up some cans at The Dollar Tree - I love that place!  Don't you?

Baked Cotton Ball Easter Eggs

Last Halloween we made our first batch of baked cotton balls (see here).  It was gooey, it was messy, it was so much fun!  It's amazing how those soft cotton balls bake into hard shells.

This evening we decided to take the same procedure and create baked cotton ball Easter eggs!

It's so much fun, and easy, AND you already have all the ingredients in your house: cotton balls (we used jumbo-sized), bleached flour, water and coloring (we used paint this time, but last time we used food dye and liquid water colors).  That's it!

To make the four Easter eggs we used the same recipe:
3 cups beached all-purpose flour
2 1/2 cups water
Line a baking tray with aluminum foil.
Draw Easter egg outlines on the aluminum foil.
Preheat your oven to 300 degrees.
Whisk together the flour and water until there are no more lumps.
Portion out the flour-water solution into four bowls (or however many colors you'll be using).  Add coloring until you receive the color you want.
Add in the cotton balls.  Make sure the entire cotton ball is completely saturated with the paint.
Begin creating!
Bake for 80-90 minutes.  Allow to cool for 10 minutes before peeling the baked cotton ball creation from the aluminum foil.

They liked this entire process: the measuring, the mixing, adding the color, squishing and creating.  I love watching how their styles are so vastly different, Little Miss started out making a solid pink Easter egg and then decided to creating a patterned border.  Whereas Wild One kept grabbing one colored cotton ball after another.  I loved watching them concentrate on their design.

We need to make these more often. They are so much fun!