Valentine's Day Countdown: Homemade marshmallows

Even though hubby and I don't usually do much for each other on Valentine's Day, I just knew I had to make these marshmallows. Okay, well actually, the truth is that I had planned on making them for him for Christmas a year ago (so two Christmases ago) then again last Christmas, but it just didn't happen.

But, it seemed like it would make a good Valentine's gift...

Now, my hubby is a marshmallow fiend. I don't think anyone in the world loves marshmallows as much as him. And, I didn't even really think people even liked marshmallows before I met him. I mean, you use them for s'mores, maybe hot chocolate and that's it, right? But, nope, he can polish off an entire bag of Jetpuffs in one sitting.

So, I enlisted the help of my trusty assistants and got to work...

Homemade Marshmallows

Ingredients:
3 packets unflavored gelatin
1 C ice water, divided
1 1/2 C sugar
1 C light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 C corn starch
1/4 C powdered sugar

Optional:
-- Add all flavorings and colorings in the last few minutes of beating.
For Cocoa Marshmallows: add in 3-4 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder. If you make cocoa marshmallows, add a spoonful or two of cocoa powder to your cornstarch mixture as well.
For Peppermint Marshmallows: add in 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
For Colored Marshmallows: add food coloring in the last few minutes of beating (think colored fruit flavored marshmallows!)

9 x 13" pan
non stick spray


Directions:
Place the contents of the gelatin packets into the bowl of a stand mixer.
Add 1/2 C of the ice water.



Stir gently to combine and then set that bowl aside.

In a small saucepan combine: remaining 1/2 C water, corn syrup, granulated sugar, and salt. Stir mixture to combine and bring it to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and then clip a candy thermometer onto the pan.
The sugar mixture needs to remain on a simmer and come to a temperature of 245 degrees F.
This was taking a long time for me, so I increased the temperature to more of a slow boil, which got it there much faster. Just keep a close eye on it and the temp and stir occasionally.



While you're waiting for your mixture to reach the correct temp, you'll have some time to, say, put on a fun photo shoot with your pint-sized sous chef.






After the mixture reaches 245 degrees, remove from heat.
While your mixer runs on low speed, you need to slowly pour the sugar mixture into the bowl with the gelatin.
You may want to put the mixture into something with a pour spout, to make it easier to get in your mixer.



After you add the entire sugar mixture to the gelatin turn the beater speed up to med-high. Continue to whip for 12-15 minutes, adding the vanilla in the last few minutes of beating.
*If you plan to add flavoring/color, remember to do it in the last few minutes of beating.



Take this time to prepare your pan.

Combine the cornstarch and powdered sugar in a small bowl. Spray a 9 x 13" pan with non stick spray and coat the bottom and sides with the cornstarch mixture. Tap excess out and save it.

When your marshmallows are done beating the mixture should be thick and white, kind of like jarred marshmallow cream.

Using a spatula, coated in non-stick spray, scrape bowl into your prepared pan. You may have to spread it around a little, which is why you want your spatula sprayed, to make it even.




Let the pan sit at room temp for about an hour (to form a dry layer on the top) and sprinkle a couple spoonfuls of the corn starch mixture over the top. Cover with a sheet of plastic wrap and let it sit overnight.

When they're ready to cut, just pull the marshmallow sheet out of the pan.

Now, it's time to cut (this is a great project for the kiddos!)!
You can use cookie cutters to make fun shapes (we did hearts!) or just use your pizza cutter to cut into bite size squares. Make sure to coat your cutting implement frequently with the cornstarch mixture, because this stuff gets pretty sticky!







And, now for the fun part! You can, of course just start digging in or even prepare a nice mug of hot chocolate to plop them in. If you're giving them for gift you can prepare your packaging. We simply put ours in a cellophane bag tied with a handmade note for the hubby. You could really have fun with it, even coating them in chocolate...or how about putting them with a graham cracker and dipping the whole thing in chocolate! Yumm!

We presented them to my hubby tonight and he loved them! I had saved a few out, and we used those to put in hot chocolate (we added peppermint to ours, so they added a nice extra touch to the hot chocolate) and they were delicious!



So, I know Valentine's Day is officially over, but that shouldn't stop you from making this for the next holiday, birthday or just random Thursday (trust me, that are that good!)

And, if you do make some, link back to me, so we can see what you came up with! :)

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Valentine's Day Countdown: Homemade Pop-Tarts

While I'm not too big on Valentine's Day, my kids love it. To be honest, they love any semblance of a holiday, because around here that usually means crafts, cookies, decorations, etc to go along with said holiday. And, of course, Valentine's Day is no different. So, I've given in, jumped on the bandwagon and, well, here I am...

I thought I'd share some of the Valentine's fun we've been working on, and will post a Valentine's related craft, recipe every day until the big day. :o) So, here's my first one...

I first saw a recipe for homemade Pop Tarts a few months ago. Homemade Pop Tarts?? Umm...yes, please! Like everyone else on the planet, I love Pop Tarts (c'mon, admit it...you know you do too)! In fact, during my days in the college dorms, I lived on Pop Tarts, Ramen noodles and Dr Pepper and when Colin and I were poor college students living on our own, Pop Tarts were a staple in our apartment. There was a short period of time we had them in the house for Colin (who still loves them and gets away with eating them since he cycles 10 miles to and from work each day), but once Z started asking for them, I had to ban them from the house.

Once I saw I could make my own, much healthier versions, I jumped on the chance!

And, I thought what a perfect Valentine's breakfast they would make, cut out into heart shapes.

Homemade Pop-Tarts
Source: Macaroni and Cheesecake, King Arthur Flour
Yield: 9 pop-tarts or about 6 heart-shaped pop-tarts (I used a medium sized cookie cutter)

For the pastry crust:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks, or 8 ounces) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
*I cheated and bought the Pillsbury pie dough from he grocery store. It seems like this might yield a smaller batch of pop-tarts than the homemade pastry dough, so just keep that in mind.

Filling Options:
Strawberry jam
Chocolate Chips
Nutella
Cinnamon/brown sugar

For the Strawberry jam filling:
¾ cup strawberry jam
*Here's where you can make it much healthier! Use your favorite sugar-free jam or your own homemade (sugar-free) jam like I did!
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon water




For the Cinnamon Filling
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, to taste
4 teaspoons unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 large egg, to brush on pastry before filling

Optional Glaze
½ Cup powdered sugar
1Tbl butter
1-2 tsp milk (less if using cream)
*You can add 1tsp unsweetened cocoa powder to glaze the chocolate pop-tarts or 1tsp cinnamon for cinnamon/sugar pop-tarts.


For Assembly:
1 egg, lightly beaten (to brush on pastry)
powdered sugar or flour for rolling out dough

Directions:

Strawberry Filling:
In a small bowl, whisk together the cornstarch & water. In a small saucepan, add strawberry jam & the cornstarch mixture. Bring to a boil & then simmer for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat & allow to cool.

Cinnamon Filling:
Whisk together the sugar, cinnamon, and flour.

Glaze:
Heat in small saucepan and whisk until smooth (or heat for about 1 min in microwave).

For the Crust:
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt & sugar. Using a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the dough until the mixture resembles coarse meal & the butter is the size of peas. In a small bowl, whisk together the egg & milk. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture & mix together with a fork until dough is evenly moistened. Knead briefly until dough comes together.

To Assemble:
Cut the dough in half. (To make the dough ahead, you can wrap each section of dough & refrigerate for up to 2 days, allowing dough to come to room temp. before rolling). Sprinkle powdered sugar on your rolling surface & then roll out one piece of dough to 1/8 inch thick, into roughly a 9 1/2 x 12 1/2 rectangle (my dough rolled out to a little less than this and it yielded the same amount of tarts). Trim the edges to get straight lines all around. Cut the dough into either 9 evenly sized rectangles or into shapes with cookie cutters. Using a straight spatula, transfer dough rectangles to a baking sheet lined with parchment. Brush the beaten egg lightly onto each of the pop-tarts.
Spoon a small amount of strawberry or brown sugar/cinnamon filling onto each (1 tsp to 1 tbsp. depending on your size). If adding chocolate chips, use about 1 tsp added to middle of pastry.
*Be sure to leave a 1/2 inch of space around the edges and do NOT overfill these as they will be messy!



Roll out the remaining piece of dough as you did the first, cutting into the same amount of pieces. Top each prepared piece of dough with another. If you are cutting out shapes, you will have leftover dough. Just keep rolling these out, so you can cut out more shapes (I ended up with a couple smaller hearts, just so that the dough wasn't wasted).
Press the seams of the dough with your fingers to seal. Press a fork around the edges of each rectangle, then prick the tops so that air can escape. Very lightly brush the tops with beaten egg.




Place the pan of tarts in the refrigerator uncovered for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until lightly golden brown. Cool slightly.
Brush or drizzle glaze on and add sprinkles, colored sugar, etc.
These are best served warm, so if you make them ahead of time reheat them in a 200 degree oven for approximately 5 minutes until warm. Store in an airtight container for up to one week.







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Pirate bedroom makeover; Days 4 & 5...

So...we finished the murals!! We had to ditch the kiddos Friday night (actually they had a blast hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa), so we could really get to work. Colin worked on the ship, and I got to work on the treasure map. I also realized, as I was stressing out about my sure the pirate map looked perfectly imperfect, that there was a reason Colin was doing the majority of the work. As I've mentioned in previous blogs, I can be a bit...umm...of a control freak. Yup, it's true. So, the drawing, painting, etc that Colin did in a week would have taken me a month! Now, I'm by no means saying I would have done a better job, but I would have obsessed about every tiny detail of everything. There may have been some tears, certainly some yelling and perhaps a diva-like fit (“I can't work like this!”) or two (or five). So, Colin made the smart decision to take it on and give me a much smaller project...the treasure map. Of course, as you'll see in the following photos, I still managed to get a little crazy doing even that...
Now that the murals are done, my mom has been working on painting all the trim in the room (it had previously been painted to match the accent colors in Z's 'old' room, so needed to be painted over). Colin is also working a cool sandy beach/island that is going to look awesome! And, I still have to do a few extras for the room, although I think I may have to put that off until next week (because I'm doing a big baby sale this weekend).
So, stay tuned for the final room reveal!!

Yup, this is me obsessing about making it look perfectly distressed


The treasure map 'base' completed


Completed ship!


Colin next to his work (also goes to show you the scale)


Finished treasure map

If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good.

So, Dr. Seuss' birthday was last week, and we just had to celebrate one of our favorite authors! After some confusion on Z's part... “But, how can Dr. Seuss come to the party if he's dead.??”...the 'celebration' got underway.

Of course, one has to have green eggs and ham! All along, Z said he would eat it, but then he chickened out. What a stinker! He did try a bite of the green deviled eggs I made, but that was it (he really isn't a big egg eater anyway though) but would not, could not touch the green ham. I ended up making sandwiches with the ham, and he insisted on non-green ham. LOL!





The inside view of my green ham panini!


Pink Ink!
If you have a lot of ink, then you should get a Yink, I think.



*Note to self: Don't get so carried away that you end up giving your kid (who rarely gets sugar) an entire glass of pink lemonade...yikes (luckily I convinced him to use the rest of his drink to make some cool ice cubes...whew!)!!


And, my attempt at cute cupcakes. I actually think it turned out okay, although I was a little disappointed I could only make one (turns out, those little rolls of Life Savers are impossible to come by nowadays, and the bags of mixed only had three red!).




So, it was a little work, but so much fun! Reading is such a huge part of our lives, and I love how passionate both of my kids are about reading. Dr. Seuss books are really spectacular, and so much fun for any age. I encourage everyone out there to read, read read to your kids as much and as often as possible, because...

”The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”

So, I guess I'll have to come up with something different for next year... And, if you want to have some kind of a Seuss celebration (and, why wait for an excuse??), check out the official (and amazing!) Seuss site: http://www.seussville.com/main.php?section=home&isbn=&catalogID=&eventID=
There are activities galore, fun games to play, recipes and you can even bulk up on your knowledge of the man himself, Theodor Seuss Geisel.

So, I'm curious...what's your favorite Dr. Seuss book and why?

What we've been up to...

So, I realize I haven't been blogging much recently. I also realized I haven't any updates on what Avalee has been up to in quite awhile. So, she'd like me to let you know, that she's currently working on a new diary entry... ;0)
Meanwhile, the reason I've been out of the blogging world recently is because we're working on a bedroom makeover for Z. He requested a new bedroom months ago, and since it hadn't been updated from baby/nursery times, we felt it was time. We gave him some ideas from which to choose, and he went with pirate (if you're wondering, other 'available' themes were; superhero, dinosaurs and monsters).
We decided after we painted it a new color ('Deep Sea Diver') we wanted to paint a mural on the wall.
So, this is what we have been steadily on for the last couple weeks...

Dad going over painting instructions. (And, yes, Z got to help paint the room. And, yes I know he's only four...;0)


Umm...can you tell he was a little excited?


No going back now...


We put this on the wall...


...Using this (BIG shout out to our friend, Laura, for letting us borrow it!!)


Then Colin traced the entire thing by himself (I did do one small anchor, but that's it)!


So, in an effort to not overwhelm you with tons of pictures ('cause I never do that), i will be posting our progress as we go along... So stay tuned for the next 'installment!'

Valentine Pinwheels

So, I haven't been a very attentive blogger recently, but I have been really busy with lots of various things... I know, not a very good excuse, but I will appease you by showing you these adorable pinwheels Z and I made for Valentines.
So, we could have just bought those cheap-o cardboard Valentines from the store, but those are so not us. LOL! Plus, Z had been begging for a craft day, so I thought we could kill two birds with one stone! My original idea was to get some cute Valentines scrapbook paper, but there was nary a paper with hearts to be found at the store. So, instead, I grabbed some various papers I thought were cute and pinwheel-ish.
Z and I really enjoyed making these together (even if he did poop out on my after the first few...) and our recipients seemed to really enjoy them as well. :0)
This is my first attempt at a tutorial, and please keep in mind that I was doing the main crafting/directions to Z plus taking the pictures. It wasn't easy, but I think the idea comes through pretty well. :0)

Step 1: Gather materials
You will need:
Pencil (for tracing pattern)
Scissors
Glue
Patterned paper (if you can find double-sided, that would be ideal; otherwise you will just have to glue your paper back-to-back)
Pushpins (in colors to match your paper)
Pencils ('stems' for the pinwheels)

Step 2: Trace pattern onto your paper (I found pattern here) and cut out your squares





*Skip this if you have double sided paper
Step 3: Glue paper back to back



Step 4: Hold pattern on your paper and use it as a guide to cut slits in the corners (tip: have two different patterns; one just for tracing and one just for cutting slits)


Step 5: Use a pushpin to poke holes in corners of your square (every other 'flap') and one in the middle of your square



Step 6: Start bringing flaps together by pushing pushpin through your holes
I found it easiest to go in reverse order and push the pushpin in the last flap first and so on...



Step 6: Push pin through eraser of pencil...and that's it!



We also added some little notes that we wrapped around each pencil. I just mounted a piece of white paper that I had printed (using Print Shop) with some cute little sayings (“You make my head spin” and “You make my heart whirl”) on one side and “Happy Valentine's Day on the other side onto a matching piece of patterned paper.








They turned out very cute and like I said, were really fun to make. I think it's a wonderful alternative to buying pre-made Valentine's, but could also be used for any other occasion (stick a couple in Easter baskets, make some patriotic pinwheels for 4th of July, or have a pinwheel themed birthday party!). Best of all, you have a fun, creative activity to do with your kids... I really can't say enough about getting hands-on and crafting with your kids!