Oklahoma Weather

Today was one of those infamous Oklahoma spring storms. The weathermen have been talking about this day for a week.

In our area, it wasn't that bad. We got some rain and some high wind and very little hail. Some other areas in Oklahoma got the dangerous storms and tornadoes.

I thought it was funny that all of us took pictures of clouds today.

Mike's early morning picture west of our house

When I was on my way to the bus stop this afternoon to get the kids, I took this picture of the clouds

When I saw Emily, she was taking this picture of the same clouds

We are supposed to get more storms tomorrow so we'll have to be weather-aware again. We do have a storm shelter in the garage so we'll be safe no matter what comes our way. 

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Wordless Wednesday - Blue Power (My new Kitchenaid mixer)

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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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Growing Up

My Emily is growing up. Can you believe it? Does she not look 17 in this picture?

If you read my last post, you already know that Emily's hibiscus bloomed for the first time today. I showed it to her when she got home and she was really excited. She calls the plant "Hi-Be" and she takes care of it herself. 

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Emily's Hibiscus

OH MY GOSH YOU GUYS!!! Emily's hibiscus is blooming and it is gorgeous! The picture does not do it justice.

I'd gone out to check on it this morning after breakfast and the bloom was maybe 1/4 open. I wish I'd taken a picture of it this morning, but I didn't have my phone with me. I figured I'd show Emily when she got home from school. I went back outside at lunch and the bloom was open and it's huge and so colorful.

There are no less than 17 other buds on the bush right now, including the one in my picture below that will be open before you know it.

Emily is going to be so excited when she gets home!

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Mother's Day 2017 - Barbados Coconut Turnovers

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there.

I didn't get to see my mother or my mother-in-law today, but I did get to spend some times with the ones who made me a mother.

We went to lunch after church.

This afternoon, Emily and I worked on an extra credit project for her social studies class. She and a partner had to pick a country and put together a presentation on it and make a specialty dish that the country is known for.

Emily and her partner chose Barbados. Her partner was out of town this weekend so I helped Emily with her dish. She wanted to make Macaroni Pie, but I was not sure if they would have a way to keep it refrigerated at school and then heat it up at the appropriate time so we picked another dish that could be served at room temperature.

We settled on Coconut Turnovers. She had to make enough to serve her entire class so that was a pretty big project. I thought they turned out great though. The bun is really soft with a nice crunch sugary topping and the inside is sweet and warm. YUM!

Barbados Coconut Turnovers Recipe

Adapted from Barbados.org

Dough

• 2¾ cups all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 4oz cold butter 
• ¼ cup sugar
• 4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1 cup warm milk (approx 110-115 degrees F)
• ⅓ cup sugar water (dissolve sugar in water)
• Brown sugar

Filling

• 2 cups grated or shredded coconut (fresh or frozen; NOT dried coconut)
• ¾ cup white granulated sugar
• ¼ teaspoon allspice
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon almond extract

Instructions

Mix the flour and salt, then cut in the cold butter until you have a breadcrumb-like consistency.

In a separate bowl, mix the white sugar, yeast and milk.

Combine the wet ingredients with the dry, mixing to form a dough. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured board and knead gently for 1-2 minutes.

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover, leave somewhere warm and let rise for about 1 hour (the dough should double in size).

Combine the filling ingredients in a bowl, stirring well so that the sugar begins to dissolve and the mixture is moist. Set aside.

Punch down the risen dough and lightly knead it for a minute. Cut the dough into 20 equal pieces. With each piece, roll into a 3-inch circle, place a heaping tablespoon of the filling in the center; spread the filling out to ½-inch from the edges. Lift one end of the dough to the other, folding and sealing the ends together. Form into a loaf shape.

Place each turnover on a greased or parchment-lined baking sheet, seam-side down. Cover and let rise for 30 minutes.

Brush turnovers with sugar water and sprinkle with brown sugar, then place in an oven preheated to 350F. After 18 minutes, brush again with sugar water, sprinkle with more brown sugar, and allow to bake for another 2-3 minutes. This will help develop a sugary crust. Remove from the oven and cool on racks for 15 minutes.

Turnovers are best eaten warm. 

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Cinco de Mayo Cactus Cupcakes

Cinco de Mayo was last week, but Mike's work had their Cinco de Mayo potluck earlier this week. I made several things for him to take, including these Cactus Cupcakes. 

I thought they turned out really cute. The cupcakes were vanilla cake with green buttercream frosting. I used a Wilton Dessert Decorator Pro with a small star tip to apply the frosting. Just start in the middle and pipe little stars all around until the cupcake is completely covered. The pink sugar flowers (similar) were something I found at Hobby Lobby. If you don't want to use pre-made flowers, you could pipe pink buttercream in the center and that would be cute, too. I used orange and tan striped cupcake liners to look like terracotta pots. I thought that worked perfectly.

I thought these cactus cupcakes were perfect for a Cinco de Mayo celebration. Mike said everyone at his work really liked them. They had a lot of desserts and he ended up bringing 8 or 9 cakes back home.

I recently got a new cupcake and cake pop display and carrier, and this event was the first time I got to use it. It worked perfectly. It was easy to put the cupcakes into their spots and they didn't move around one I got them in place. I was concerned about how they would travel in the car so I asked Mike to send me a picture of the cupcakes in the carrier when he arrived at work. He indulged me in that and they looked perfect. 

Sadly, the leftovers did not arrive back home quite as neatly. I guess he was in a hurry to get home because a few of the cupcakes had fallen off their perches onto the tier below. I still think it's a great carrier though. Mike got a lot of questions and compliments on it from people at his work. I'll do a another post to show you all the neat features of the carrier I got.

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Baby Shower Candy Bar Game

One of the games we played at the baby shower was the candy bar game. I don't know if you've ever had the opportunity to play this game before, but it was a lot of fun and sometimes pretty funny.

In the candy bar game, the host says a word or phrase related to pregnancy or parenting and the players have to guess the type of candy bar that best represents this word or phrase. Instead of printing a list of the possible choices, I decided to attach the candy bars to a poster board. I used a stiff poster board that I found at Hobby Lobby. I thought this method worked out really well because people could visually see their options and which choices are still remaining.

You can find many different lists of phrases and their matching candy bars for this game online, but I will share the list I used below. 

Baby Shower Candy Bar Game Matches:

Daddy at Conception	Big Hunk
The conception	Skor
Choosing a baby name	Whatchamacallit
Girl's Name	Baby Ruth
Boy Names	Mike and Ike
Anesthesiologist	Mr Goodbar
Epidural	Lifesavers
Delivery Doctor	Butterfinger
Labor and Delivery nurses	Sweet Tarts
Umbilical cord	Twizzlers
Hospital Bill	100 Grand
Preemie Baby	Runts
Chunky Baby	Rolo
Diapers, Formula, Medicine	Payday
Dirty Laundry	Mounds
Postpartum Belly	Jelly Belly
Breast Feeding	Milky Way
Dirty Diaper	Milk Duds
Time Alone	Zero
Mommy's Sleep Time	Fast Break
Lullabies	Symphony
New baby	Almond Joy
Triplets	Three Musketeers
Twins	Twix
Baby Laughs	Snickers
Cool Mom	Peppermint Patty
First year of Parenthood	Rocky Road

Some of the candy bars were hard for us to find. I actually put Emily and Mike in charge of finding all the obscure candy bars. They found a lot of them at CVS and Walgreens. You can go on the Walgreens website and look up which stores have certain candy bars. The Big Hunk is one of the candy bars that we had a hard time finding and we finally found on the Walgreens website at a store a few miles away from us. Mike and Noah went there to look for it and they found it right away.

Be sure to pin this so that you can find it later!

The Rocky Road bar was another one that we had trouble with. Mike and Emily eventually found it at a specialty candy store called Lohmann's Good Things in Norman.

This game was a big hit at the baby shower. I'd highly recommend it. Like I said, you can modify the list of candy bars to your liking. There are many choices out there for this game.

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The Best Cinnamon Rolls With Thick Ooey Gooey Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

A few months ago, I made a batch of cinnamon rolls for Mike's work. It was a lot of work! I started off using my hand mixer, but the dough was way too much for it. I ended up doing all the kneading by hand. They were good, but it was way too difficult.

After that, I told Mike that if he wanted more cinnamon rolls he was going to have to get me a Kitchenaid mixer. He told me to go get one. So I did. Since then, I've made several batches of cinnamon rolls for different occasions.

Want to see how I make them? I figured you'd want to know. The recipe is below along with some handy tips from me!

Yield: 12 large rolls or 24 medium sized rollsAuthor: Jennifer SmithPin it

The Best Cinnamon Rolls with Thick Ooey Gooey Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

These cinnamon rolls are so thick and fluffy with delicious cinnamon flavor. And the maple cream cheese frosting just takes these rolls over the top. Don't wait for a special occasion - make these today!

ingredients:

Rolls

• • 2 cups milk 
• • 1/2 cup butter
• • 1/2 cup sugar
• • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• • 1 package Active Dry yeast
• • 2 large eggs
• • 6 `1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Filling

• • 1/2 cup butter, softened
• • 1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
• • 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Frosting

• • 8 ounces cream cheese
• • 1/4 cup butter
• • 1 teaspoon vanilla
• • 2 teaspoons maple extract
• • Pinch of salt
• • 1 pound powdered sugar
• • 1/4 cup milk or more for consistency

instructions

1. In a medium sauce pan, add milk, butter, salt and  sugar. Heat until just below the boiling point. When it starts steaming and bubbling around the edges, remove from heat and let cool until approximately 120 degrees F.
2. Transfer milk mixture to the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment and add yeast. Let sit for about 5 minutes until the yeast starts to foam.
3. Add eggs and mix until combined. Add flour a little at a time until the dough pulls away from the side of the pan. The dough should be soft and only slightly sticky.  Add more flour if needed. Knead for 3 minutes.
4. Transfer dough to a lightly greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until doubled in size.
5. Divide the dough in half. Use a rolling pin to roll each half of dough into an 18-inch by 12-inch rectangle. Try to make it as square as possible on the sides. 
6. Spread one stick of softened butter over each rectangle. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Pat it lightly with the palm of your hands.
7. Starting with the long end, roll the dough into a tight log. Pinch the ends together and turn the log over so that the seam is facing down. 
8. Cut each log in half, then cut each portion in half again, forming four equal sections. Cut each of the four sections in thirds. You will end up with 12 cinnamon rolls from each log. 
9. Place cinnamon rolls into round four cake pan, two 9X13" pan, or one 11X17" pan or similar that have been sprayed with cooking spray. Cover with plastic wrap then a clean kitchen towel and let rise until double.
10. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake cinnamon rolls 18-22 minutes until slightly brown on top.
11. For the frosting, beat together the cream cheese and butter until well combined. Add vanilla, maple flavoring, and salt. Mix well. Add in powdered sugar a little at a time. Add milk until desired consistency. Frosting should be thick but pourable. 

notes

If I don't have a lot of time, I like to heat my oven to 200 degrees then turn off the heat and put my bowl of dough inside to help it rise faster. 
You can punch the dough down if it has risen to the top of the bowl, but you're not ready to roll it out yet. Just let it rise again and then go on to the next step.
If I'm planning to take the cinnamon rolls somewhere, I usually bake them in disposable round cake plans. You can find these at most grocery stores or you can buy them in bulk on Amazon. I usually fit 6-7 rolls to a pan.
If you have some rolls that start to come unrolled when you're slicing and putting them in the pan, it's okay to just tuck the loose end under your cinnamon roll. It will still come out perfect.
I like to make this dough in the evening and wait to bake the cinnamon rolls until the morning. I do steps 1-9 the evening before and then cover the pans with foil and put them in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, I take out the pans and let them warm up on the counter for maybe 30 minutes before I bake them (remove foil before baking.)  You can stack the round cake pans in the refrigerator, too. I think it helps ensure the cinnamon rolls will be even in height.
I also make the frosting the night before and just put it into a gallon sized zip top baggie. I put the bag of frosting in the refrigerator overnight and then just snip off the corner and pipe the frosting onto the cinnamon rolls after they bake.
These cinnamon rolls freeze well. After they have been frosted, let them cool and then put each cinnamon roll into a separate quart sized freezer bag. Or you can put several together in one bag. When you get ready to use them, just pull them out of the bag frozen and heat them in the microwave.
If you like bigger cinnamon rolls, you can skip the step where you half the dough and just make one 18-inch X 12-inch rectangle out of the dough. This would make 6 large cinnamon rolls. 
I've tried to double this recipe a couple times, but the dough is too much for my mixer to handle and it gets all stuck in the motor. If you want more dough, just mix up a second batch.

http://www.gracelikerainblog.com/2017/05/the-best-cinnamon-rolls-with-thick-ooey.html

I love making the big, thick fluffy rolls. They are so delicious, but it's way too much for most people to eat.

They look great and would be wonderful if you want to impress somebody. You can make them for bake sales or people with big appetites.

Or you can just eat them all up. Or freeze them. Or just eat them. 

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Emily's Salt Dough Map

A few weeks ago, Emily's class made 3D salt dough maps in class.  We had to make the salt dough at home and send it to school in a plastic baggie and provide the pizza box and supplies to decorate the map, but they did the rest of the project in class.

Salt Dough Recipe

4 cups flour

2 cups salt

2 Tbsp cream of tartar

1 1/2 to 2 cups water (add a little at a time until it's the consistency of Play-Doh)

Mix together the dry ingredients then add the water a little bit at a time until the dough is the consistency of Play-Doh. Don't be afraid to use your hands. Knead for a few minutes until smooth. 

I told Emily that we could whip up this dough really quick with the Kitchenaid mixer, but Emily said that her teacher said to mix it by hand. Okay fine. You can do it by hand, too. 

I thought Emily's map turned out GREAT! I was really impressed with it. She decorated it with acrylic paints and labeled it with a Sharpie marker. 

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Wordless Wednesday - Flower Shopping After Church

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How to Make an Edible Animal Cell Cake

Several weeks ago, Emily had the opportunity to make a cell cake for extra credit in her science class. It could be made of any food as long as it was all edible and large enough to feed half of her class.

She chose to make an animal cell cake, which is round. We did a lot of research on the internet to get some ideas for what to use for different parts of the cake.

Emily wanted to look like the cell was cut open so we baked one cake in a large round baking pan and another cake in a large glass bowl to make a dome for the top of the cell. We cut off some dome cake so that we can add in all of our cell parts. 

Here are the items we used for different parts of the animal cell:

Yellow frosting - Cytoplasm

Orange frosting - Cell membrane (add red food coloring to the yellow frosting to make things easy on yourself)

White candy melts - Ribosomes

Airhead Extreme candy belts - Golgi body

Large round lollipop - Nucleus

Sour gummy worms - Rough ER

Red Mike & Ike - Smooth ER

Orange frosting - Nuclear membrane (put some frosting in a plastic baggie and snip off the end to pipe the frosting around the nucleus)

Red gummy bears - Mitochondria

White jelly beans - Vacuole

If you try it, let me know how it goes for you.

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Spring Time, Flower Time

We finally got out and got our spring flowers this weekend. Want to see a quick tour?

Emily's new hibiscus in the barrel. I can't wait to show you the color of the flowers. (The blooms got knocked off during transit.) I'm loving the pretty colors of the coleus in the green pot. I need to get a closer picture of it. 

 

Going to try some begonias in the boot this year. It doesn't have drainage holes so it's hard to keep the moisture right. If this doesn't work, we might need to try some cactus or succulents. 

The green pot has the blueberry bush in it. I was reading up on blueberries last night and it said I needed more than one plant for cross-pollination if I want to have any blueberries so we'll see how it goes. I wasn't planning to have a whole blueberry farm in my backyard. 

We got a fancy hydrangea for the front flower bed. It's supposed to have evolving colors all through the blooming season. I've never had a hydrangea before so we'll see how it goes. I love how big and bold the flowers are though. 

For the pots in the front, I went with a red and white theme. I put a couple different types of trailing flowers in the urn by the front door. I'm hoping the mandevilla vine turns out to be really showy with a trail of red flowers down the side. 

I always like to have some spikes in my tall pots for height. I got some in a dark purple shade this year. 

I usually have really good luck with begonias in my big pots. I went with red flowers on the begonias to go with the red theme. I buy bigger pots of flowers for the front so that they'll fill in quicker.

I still have one more pot in the backyard to fill. Any ideas?

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Eating At Eischen's

For supper tonight, we took the kids to Eischen's Bar in Okarche, Oklahoma. It's very well-known around this area, but we'd never been there before. It's about an hour drive from our house so that's probably part of the reason we've never visited before now. 

Eischen's is a real experience. They don't have a lot to choose from on the menu, but what they do have is really good.  REALLY good.

We had a whole fried chicken, okra, cheese nachos, chili cheese nachos and a frito chili pie. That was WAY too much food. Obviously, we did not know how large the portions were going to be. We would have been fine with a chicken, okra, and one of the nachos.

Emily really liked the frito chili pie. Noah liked to eat his chicken on bread with ketchup.

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Cool Happy Smart

Noah's class made a word cloud at school. Noah wrote his name on it and then his classmates took turns signing it and putting kind things about Noah on it. I thought it turned out so cute!

Noah's classmates think he's cool, happy, smart, silly and "kute". I happen to agree!

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Teacher Appreciation - Bath Bombs

This week was teacher appreciation week at the kids' school. The school had different themes each day - Cards and Notes, Lovin' from the Oven, Meet the Need, Favorite Things. But the PTA also had different things going on for the teachers each day.

We did not participate in all the events, but we contributed several things I'm going to share on the blog.  

One of the things we did is send tins of fizzy bath bombs to the teachers. Super easy!

I found some bath bombs in tins on Amazon and just added a tag that I printed off the internet.

These are the tags I found online. So cute and so easy.

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Frontier City Field Trip

Today was field trip day for Emily's class! They went to Frontier City, which is a local theme park. I went along as a chaperone.

There were 7 girls in my group. We all had a good time. One of the hardest things was trying to keep up with everyone when some girls did not want to ride the same rides as the others. 

I took quite a few pictures, but I don't have permission to post pictures of the other kids online so I had to crop some of them out of the picture. 

One of the rides we found was The Tornado, which is the Tilt-A-Whirl!  I rode it twice. I think Emily rode it three times. I love that ride. It was a lot of fun. 

Some of the girls were wanting to ride the Silver Bullet, which is one of the big rollercoasters. We headed over there and when we got close we realized that the line for the ride was very short, in fact non-existent. It took me a second to figure out what was happening, but the ride had gotten stuck at the top and the fire crews were there rescuing people off the ride!

They were like 80 feet up in the air or something crazy like that! The news helicopters were circling overhead and broadcasting the rescue live on the TV and internet. It took them about 2 hours to get everyone off the ride.

Thankfully, none of the kids from our school were on the ride at the time and everyone made it off there safely.

Since we were not able to ride the Silver Bullet, we kept walking and eventually found the water rapids ride. We got sooooo wet! I guess that's the point of the ride, but it was cold out there today and we were very wet. But this amusement park has a full-body heated dryer that you can pay to use. We all get into it together and tried to warm up a little bit. When I got home a couple of hours later, my clothes and shoes were still very wet. 

It was a good field trip and a lot of fun. I hope it's something that the kids will remember for a very long time.

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