Tag Archives: party

Hot Chocolate Spoons 

0
Posted on by

​Hot Chocolate Spoons 
These guys are great to stir your hot chocolate or coffee. I make these every year for Christmas gifts and every year they are the most requested treat I make.
For the single and child free in the family they get 4 spoons per person. Families with children I give them A LOT. Kiddos love these spoons. I used to give a packet of hot cocoa  per spoon but now that I make 200 plus of these every year only people new to the  spoon of happiness get packets.

What you need:
8 oz light cocoa candy melts
Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips. Sprinkles or Ghirardelli white melting wafers. Plastic or wooden spoons. Cheap plastic will melt, get the heavy duty plastic spoons.
Wax paper.

How to:
Take the whole bag of candy melts. Small handful of the chocolate chips. Melt using double boiler method or microwave. If microwave follow directions on candy melts bag. Remember half power or defrost setting.
Once melted just dip spoons in chocolate, set on wax paper. If chocolate is too thick add just a dab of coconut oil. Add more if needed but stir well and test on a spoon before adding more. You can go from too thick to too runny easily.
If adding sprinkles, sprinkle on now before chocolate sets up. If drizzling white chocolate let spoons set up for atleast 30 minutes. I melt small batches of white chocolate for the drizzle. A little goes a long way. If you coat any of the spoons in white chocolate it’s best to double coat. Dip once. Set up. Dip again.

Learn from my mistake people. One year I had two crockpots going making candy, the oven on all day making candied nuts, and my dryer running most of day. All this in kitchen where I was making the spoons. The room was so toasty my chocolate could not set up. Now I do all my chocolate coating on a day by itself.

 Gift giving: I use 4×6 plastic treat bags. Two spoons per bag. I cross them corner to corner. Then twist tie at the cross section. I then tie on some curling ribbon. Now put them in a gift bag or a Christmas theme coffee mug. Throw on a ribbon and name tag. Done.

If it’s a big family getting a good bit I tin them. Use wax paper between layers instead of bagging. Saves time and makes it convenient for the receiver.
At my family gatherings there’s always unexpected guest. Usually a family or person new to area that have no one to celebrate the holidays with. So I make several extra candy gift sets.

  

When You Play With Fire

0
Posted on by

When You Play with Fire…

You’re going to get burnt. Unless you’re careful and don’t touch the flame. Crazy talk, right?
I’m still preparing for the pirate wedding. Its three days away now. Every pirate worth his salt knows if you have a table of treasure you need some light to see the treasure.
The main table at the reception will have a good bit of candles in bottles. Don’t worry, we are not going to have them lit. Except for pictures. We may be pirates but we are cautious pirates.
I wanted the bottles and candles to look used with lots of wax dripping.
Cue thinking music that gets louder as I approach an idea, then ending on a high dramatic note as the idea takes root and I exclaim, “Aha. I’ve got it!”
I need three things for this project: bottles, candles and fire.
When dripping candles you want a candle that’s going to drip with ease and drip fast. The cheaper the candle the better the drip.
To the dollar store I go. I get bottles and candles. Also some twine, I’ve been wanting to try my hand with projects using twine. Seems like a good time to start.
One bottle I left as is the other I wrapped twine at the top. I thought I had some craft glue but didn’t so I used crazy glue for the twine placement. So after I was able to get my fingers and hands unglued from one another I was ready for some wax dripping.
Looking back I should have poured sand in the bottles before waxing. No worries I have 20 more bottles to get that part right.
So learn from my mistakes. Pour the sand or whatever you are using to weigh down the bottles in first. You don’t need to fill them full just a few inches so they are not easy to tip over.
Hold candle and light it. Tilt the candle, so the flame touches the wax. Once it starts to drip hold candle on edge of bottle lip. Let your wax build up a good drip line before moving around bottle. If the bottle hole is too big for candle to sit in let wax drip on inside of lip to build up and make the hole smaller. Keep waxing until the candle fits snugly.
Place candle in hole. The candle is still lit. Light another candle in matching color. Now use that candle to make wax drippings on candle in jar. You can drip a little or a lot. Having both candles lit gives you two flames burning that second candle so you get more and faster wax dripping. (The photo shows only one lit, that is so you could see the drip better.) 


Once I am happy with the look I let the candle in jar burn down to whatever length I want it.
Two down 20-ish more to go. No rest for the wicked.
If you need to transport the bottles to a different location I would wait to place candles in bottles and do their candle dripping. Do that part after you have set jars where they need to go and placed candles in the bottles. Plan on one to three minutes for each candle.
This is a project that kids DO NOT need to be involved in. Even though I spent one six week semester of fifth grade doing candle wax dripping art. It was the 80s and safety was not something that was practiced back then. Can you imagine looking into a classroom full of kids and everyone of them playing with fire? Holy arsonist training Batman!

Dolls Gone Wild

3
Posted on by

lead

Drunk Cake for 21st Birthday

My demon child turned 21 recently. Being the awesome mom I am I decided to make her a drunk Barbie cake. If you look these up on Pinterest you see Barbie is usually bent over a toilet vomiting sprinkles. Cute, but I wanted to do more of a Barbie Gone Wild theme.

Normally I would bake the cake myself but this time I cheated and bought a small cake from our local grocery store.

I bought a swimsuit Barbie doll, the swimsuit would be her underwear. She had to have dark hair to match my daughters.

I hit up the ABC store to grab a few shot bottles. Once home I emptied a few of them. I will let you speculate on how.

I tried to gently sit the doll upon the cake, she kept wanting to fall off the cake. She’s such a drunk! I ended up just pushing her rump down into the cake. I placed the liquor bottles on the cake and the 21 candle.

Bam! Done!

My daughter LOVED it! She had a great birthday and Barbie had a really really good time.

 

Before the booze got to her

Before the booze got to her

the cakego home barbie you're drunk

We did not let her drive her dream car home.

We did not let her drive the dream car home.

Something Wicked This Way Bakes

0
Posted on by

cut cake close up

It is only April but I couldn’t wait to try a Halloween version of this cake. As you recall I made this cake a few posts back with spring colors. When I say I couldn’t wait to make this cake what I meant was: I made this cake and took it to the family Easter dinner. At this point my family just took me bringing a Halloween cake to Easter in stride. It took many years but I think they have finally accepted Halloween is my lifestyle not a holiday. If they did not like the cake theme my family kept that to themselves. They were impressed with the swirled color effect. They said the cake was tasty also.

So here is the instructions to make this cake. Once you learn the process you can customize the colors for any holiday or party theme.

Ingredients:

1 white cake mix
3 eggs
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 ¼ cup water
1 tsp. vanilla extract (optional)
Pam to spray the pan
Food coloring or icing coloring gel
Any items you want to decorate with (I used gummy mummy)
1 can white frosting

Use a Bundt pan.

Preheat your oven to the temperature on the box directions. Spray/grease your Bundt pan.
If you read the box directions for a white cake mix it calls for 3 egg whites. That’s because you don’t want to yolk to mess up your white cake. Since we are going to color the batter it is okay to use 3 whole eggs.

Add the items listed on the cake box along with vanilla extract to a large bowl. Mix your cake according to box directions. After it is mixed thoroughly, divide the batter between three bowls. I find it works out better if you don’t get the amounts totally even.
So now you have 3 bowls of white cake mix, now get your food coloring. I use the gel colors, I find they work better. One color to each bowl. Orange, green and purple. Halloween colors. Mix, mix and mix some more. Get rid of all that white.

color gel

color gel

Divide batter into 3 bowls. Mix in colors. Layer in pan

Divide batter into 3 bowls. Mix in colors. Layer in pan

Take the bowl with the most batter and pour in pan first. Follow with the bowl with next most amount. Finish with the bowl that has the least. You don’t want to cover each color completely. I have a picture so you can see what I’m talking about.

Stick that pan in the oven and let the cake voodoo happen.
Now the cake is baked. Let it cool before you turn it out of the pan.

The spring color cake I made the other week, I divided the icing into three bowls and colored the icing with the same colors I used in the batter. This time I decided to go with red to look like dripping blood.

Put the icing in a bowl. Heat in microwave 25 seconds. You want the icing running so you can drizzle over cake. You may have to heat it a few more seconds if the icing is still thick after 25 seconds. BUT before you decide it needs to heat more give it a good stir, that maybe all it needs. Once you have it runny enough to drizzle add your color and mix away. Once mixed good drizzle that bloody concoction like you want that cake to resemble a crime scene.

without gunny mummy

without gunmy mummy

Let the icing cool then add your decorations.

Done! Now sit back and enjoy your evil creation.

bloody cake 2

uhhh 5

Here is the link to where I learned this technique. Actually it’s the pin that will gateway you to the site.
Here is the post where I made this cake with spring colors.

Duck, Duck, Baby Shower

0
Posted on by

I am helping my demonic offspring plan Ms. K’s first birthday party.  Wow it’s been almost a year since we were graced with a granddaughter.  I have been trying to teach her the important things in life, for example: when chewing on a severed hand it is not polite to use the hand to hit people.  She also likes to push the hand along the floor like it’s a toy car.

Helping to plan Ms Ks birthday party reminded me of the baby shower I threw for my daughter. She choose rubber ducks for the theme. I have this thing for rubber ducky’s. I love them. If you take a tour through my home, every room you enter is decorated in dark and evil things. But go into the bathroom and…bam. Bright yellow walls, rubber ducks lurking about everywhere and a rubber duck shower curtain. Surprising huh? So I was pretty darn excited about that shower.

Pinterest, Amazon, and the dangerous mind contained in my skull came up with the following.

SAMSUNG

Ducks ducks and more ducks

Ducks ducks and more ducks

ducky

Stuffed ducks came from Amazon, Wal-Mart and Dollar General. Now not all were ducks, some were little chicks. It was close to Easter so chicks were everywhere. We made them work.  Ducky gift box with bag, rubber ducks, blue rocks and glass bowls came from dollar store.

Ducky S’mores (take home treat for guest)

Yes I know the peeps are chicks but I had a stern talk with them. After our talk they were okay with being ducks for the day.

To make the Ducky S’mores you need:

Marshmallow Peeps

Graham crackers

Small Hershey bars

Small clear treat bags

Ribbon and printed cards for decoration.

Ducky (no longer chick) S'mores

Ducky (no longer chick) S’mores

I would tell you how they tasted but everyone snatched them up before I had a chance to get one.  Actually, half way through the baby shower I had to run to the kitchen and assemble more.

That day was a great day. The demon I birthed was soon to birth her own. Yes little Ms. K is a little demon, I have pictures to prove it. You can look at those eyes and see she is plotting evil things.

Little Ms. K plotting evil.

Little Ms. K plotting evil.