Vacation Bible School

Our church had Vacation Bible School last week. Emily was too old to go as a student, but she went a a helper. She assisted in the preschool music area. I think she really enjoyed it. 

Noah was in one of the second grade classes and he really had a good time. He liked the music and all the crafts that they made. During the praise and worship time in the auditorium, they throw out t-shirts - I can't remember what they call it. Toss out? Or something? Anyway, Noah really wanted to catch a shirt, but he never did. 

On Thursday at VBS, Noah accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior and asked Jesus into his heart! We are so excited for him and so proud of him. I know that he understands the decision that he's making and he's excited about too. I'm so happy that all of my family will be with me in heaven some day. 

Thursday night was Family Night. I loved seeing Noah singing and doing the motions to all the songs that they sung. They threw some more shirts, but we couldn't catch one. After the worship service, went to the atrium where they had snow cones, cotton candy, hot dogs, inflatables, and games. It was a lot of fun!

Since I had to work and couldn't go up to the church to help at bible school, I decided to make treats for the workers. 

The first day, Emily and I made some brightly colored cake pops. Emily and I put colored sanding sugar on most of them. A few of them, we just put sprinkles. They were Devil's Food on the inside. So good. The workers really loved them. 

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Memorial Day Patriotic Cake Pops

Emily and I made some patriotic cake pops to take down to Magnolia for the Memorial Day weekend. I've posted about my elephant cake pops, the blue sprinkle cake pops, the red apple cake pops, and even the ones I made for the piano recital. So I knew my family was going to want to try some. 

The cake was red velvet with cream cheese frosting. I thought that was perfect for a patriotic cake pop. 

For the drizzle, we just melted a little bit of the candy coating and put it into plastic storage bags the snipped off the tip. With the white candy coating, we snipped a hole that was a little too big and it didn't squeeze out smoothly.  We did better with the red and the blue. It didn't reheat well in the plastic bags though so you're going to have to work fast and probably use one color at a time. 

We used red sanding sugar on a few of the red cake pops. I thought that made an interesting look. We also used red, white, and blue nonpareils on a few cake balls for variety. 

I don't know if you noticed, but I laced red and blue ribbon around the cake pop stand this time. I thought that was cute, but I don't know how noticeable it is. 

We're going to be making more of these next week for a bake sale at Mike's work. 

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Red Apple Cake Pops

I know that school is out for the summer, but I wanted to share another thing that Emily and I made for Teacher Appreciation week.

One of the PTA special activities as a treat day for the teachers where people could bring sweet treats and baked goods. Emily and I searched the internet for some teacher-related goodies and we ended up finding these red apple cake pops. They are so cute! I know I say that all the time about the stuff I make, but look at these! They are sooooo cute!

The stems are broken pretzel rods. My tip is to break the pretzel rods pretty small and just lightly place them into the red candy coating, don't try to jam them down into the actual cake ball. If you press the pretzel rod pieces into the actual cake ball, you'll likely get some of the cake ball showing through around the "stem". My cake was a nice dark chocolate so it looked like I had some bad apples.

The green "leaves" are green Tic Tacs. I used wintergreen Tic Tacs. They looked cute, but they were not great to bite into when you're eating a cake pop. If I make these again, I will probably find something different to use for the leaves, maybe some large leaf sprinkles. 

A lot of my apple cake pops cracked. I think it's because I inserted the sticks then put the tray of cake pops into the refrigerator for about a half hour. I think cold cake pops are a problem and they should be dipped at room temperature. 

I individually wrapped the cake pops and then put them into a little cardboard tray that I found at Hobby Lobby.

Then I wrapped the whole tray of apple cake pops in cellophane and tied a nice red shiny bow on it. Ya'll, I need serious help with my bow tying. They never end up straight or pretty. 

I've appreciated Emily and Noah's teachers so much this year. They have done a lot of the kids and I hope they have a great summer. It will probably take them that long to recover. Ha ha.

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Emily's Piano Recital

Emily's piano recital was on Saturday afternoon. She played "Silver Moon Boat," a Chinese folk melody, and she did really well. She really enjoys playing the piano and it's easy to tell that she's improving every year.

You can watch her performance in this YouTube video.

After the recital, everyone brings goodies to share. Emily and I made some cake pops to take to the recital.

This time, we made chocolate cake pops. I just used some leftover candy coating that I had and decorated them with sprinkles. Last time I made cake pops, a lot of them cracked. But this time, I did not refrigerate the cake pops and none of them cracked. Perhaps that's the trick?

This was the first time I got to use my cupcake/cake pop carrier for cake pops and it worked out perfectly. I just put the lid on to transport them, then took off the lid for serving.

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Blue Sprinkle Cake Pops

Remember those cute little elephant cake pops that I made a few weeks ago? Well, I only made a couple dozen of them so I had a lot of balls of cake dough leftover. I stuck them in the freezer for just such an occasion as this.

When Mike said that his work was having a potluck, I knew that I wanted to make something with those frozen call balls. I looked online to see if I saw some easy cake balls that would work for Cinco de Mayo, but nothing really stood out to me. So, I just ended up using the rest of the leftovers from the elephant cake pops to make these cute and easy blue sprinkle cake pops. I used the leftover blue candy melts that I'd used for the elephant ears.

Making Cake Pops with Frozen Cake Dough Balls

Step 1 - Let frozen cake balls thaw in the refrigerator for a few hours. I'd frozen my cake balls and then put them into a plastic freezer bag so I just laid the bag flat in the refrigerator to thaw.

Step 2 - Melt a small amount of candy melts in a small container. Dip the lollipop stick into the candy melt then insert it into the bottom of the cake pops. Then put back into the refrigerator to let the candy set up, at least 10 minutes.

Step 3 - Melt the rest of the candy melts in a tall container. I actually use a blender bottle to hold my melted candy melts. It's nice and deep and perfect for dipping.

Step 4 - Dip the cake balls into the melted candy melts and let the excess drip off. I usually tap-tap-tap the stick on the side of the cup to let everything drip back into the container. 

Step 5 - Sprinkle the colorful sprinkles over your cake ball while it's still wet. Make sure you do this over a small bowl so at you can catch the sprinkles that fall off.

Cake Pop Tips!

• First and foremost, don't use too much frosting in your cake balls. You don't want them to be too wet because they'll be hard to work with.
• If your cake balls look like they're starting to fall off the stick while you're dipping then, just twirl the cake ball around slowly to try to keep things even.
• Use a foam block covered in aluminum foil to hold your cake balls upright as they are drying. You can pre-poke holes with a skewer to make it easier to insert the lollipop sticks.

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