Chocolate Chip Cookie Balls!

A little twist on the madness that is the cake ball!

This is our "fix" for the "less than professional" cookies the other night! Yep, why not. You are allowed to crumble a perfectly good cake and smash some frosting into it so why not a cookie version? Cookies, Good! Frosting, Good! Cookies Balls, GOOD!

I chunked these frumpy cookies

into the largest mixing bowl I had and

grabbed my potatoes masher.

That's right! I mashed about a dozen of those bad boys to pieces! Then I scooped close to 1/2 a can of frosting into my bowl. The potato masher was now longer mixing in the frosting well so I moved on to my pampered chef chop-n-mix! Worked great and I didn't have the nasty mess all over my hands. Score!

Well, no mess until I had to ball them up but that was minimal. I didn't cover them in almond bark {as you do most cake calls} mainly because I was fresh out ;o)

Worked out though. Leaving them setting out allowed the cookie frosting mixture to dry out just like a normal cookie with frosting on the top. My hubs LOVED that they weren't gooey! I highly recommend this. Pretty sure we polished them off before my adorable chefs woke up the next morning!

Do you have any food "fixes" to share!?!

Share Button

Post to Twitter

TOM’s 1 for 1 Policy

We've adopted a principle similar to TOM's 1 for 1 policy.

We have often encouraged out children to eat a variety of food during meal times. One of the ways we get them to do this is the 1 for 1 policy {game}. Today I spent 30+ minutes trying to get my almost-2-year-old to eat a cheese burger. I know, right! She doesn't want to eat a cheese burger? Anyways. I ended up tearing the burger into bit-sized pieces and sat with a bag of grapes exchanging 1 grape for every 1 bit of burger. It may sound silly but it's worked for our 2 oldest kids.

What parenting tricks have you learned to help your kids eat?

Share Button

Post to Twitter

Refried Beans {Thoughtful Thursday Link-Up}

Do you have anything thoughtful you 'd like to share this Thursday? Some little helpful hint? A fun recipe? A tool you love? Please share by linking up below and then posting the "Thoughtful Thursday" button to your post so other ladies can get lots of thoughtful helps! Consider visiting the link above yours and encouraging them through comments!

Here's my thoughtfulness for the week:

Any other WIC mamma's out there? Do you have those huge piles of beans in your pantry or cabinet building higher and higher every month? How 'bout cheese? Need something new to use up those cans of beans and blocks of cheeses? Here's my new WIC refried beans recipe:

Homemade Refried Beans

  • 2 cans of pinto beans
  • 2 tbl onion pwd
  • 1 tbl onion salt
  • dash of regular salt
  • 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese {for top}

 

In a medium sized sauce pan dump your 2 cans of beans {mainly drained} along with all of your seasonings and 1/4 cup cheese.

Begin to heat them stirring occasionally so it doesn't burn on the bottom of the pan. Lower the temp when it begins to boil as to let it just simmer.

Mash beans with a potato masher. I don't like big pieces of bean skin so I used a blender to puree' them even more {optional}.

After they're well mixed then I poured them into a serving dish and shredded the other 1/4 cup cheese over the top. I made mine a head of time to you can reheat the beans closer to time either in the microwave or in the oven.

This entire recipe only takes about 5 minutes. Hope you like!

Do you have any recipes to help use up some of those monthly WIC items?

 

Share Button

Post to Twitter

Less than Professional

The hubs and I were contemplating eating out last night just for fun. No rush. No where to be. No logical reason we needed to grab food and run. Just time to hang out as a family out.

We quickly changed our minds when we realized how filthy our kids where after playing outside for the afternoon. They were in desperate need of some down time, tick removal, intense baths, allergy medicine and early bed time. We stripped them down to diapers and panties for a relaxing dinner and then decided to make some dessert.

Chocolate chip cookies are easy enough...right?!?

We made the fancy dancy homemade recipe off the back of the chocolate chip bag.

The girls helped me gather their steps and the ingredients. Toting heavy containers back and forth from the pantry. Racing one another to be the one who carried the most to the counter. Halted by the fact that heaving it up to the counter top was a chore in itself.

Izzie's job was to mixed all the dry stuff. I imagined this to be the less messy of the elements. I gave her an over-sized bowl in an attempt to {ahem} keep all the contents in place.

Maggie was in charge of the 'liquid' part. {I forgot we had run out of stick butter and forgot the importance of using stick rather than tub...you'll see}. She loves counting the scoops of sugar, butter, and being allowed to do the EGGS all by herself.
*I use the 1/4 cup scoop to measure everything when cooking/baking with them for a couple reasons:

  1. it's smaller and fits into the containers easier
  2. since it's smaller it is also easier for them to handle/balance
  3. they get to scoop more {seemingly}

We has a few slight mishaps but TONS of fun:

Izzie's stirring got a little out of hand, duh, she's 2. It covered the counter, steps, chair, feet, aprons, Hats, hair, and faces. The poor baby tried to clean up her own mess by scooping it off the counter. Into Her Mouth! Yep, Squatted mouth level to the counter, scooping the powder {combination of flour, baking soda, and salt} straight into that tiny mouth. Her eyelashes were covered {goopy allergy filled eye lashes}.

Maggie missed the mixing bowl with her egg. She carried them successfully to the counter. Cracked them beautifully. And then pulled that bad boy open, gave it a little shack and pulled it out of the mixing bowl about a millisecond too soon. She quickly shot her eyes to me. I laughed hysterically. She began to laugh and said, "Oops!" We scooped the puddle of egg as well as the remainder of Izzie's powder off the counter and plopped it into the bowl. Gross!

The entire corner of the kitchen was Covered in...cookie parts. I'm sure Matt thought we were nuts cackling and squealing all while he was on the phone with a long lost friend.

The giggling continued as I let them taste the batter {I know, I know...raw egg. I didn't die as a kid and they haven't...yet ;O)}

When I started scooping {I use that turn loosely} the cookie dough {also used loosely} onto the pans I remembered why you are supposed to use stick butter. It was a runny mess. Oh well, the girls didn't seem to mind as they used their itsy bitsy fingers to catch the drizzle as it quickly fell from the beater.

Cleaning up was almost as much fun. We shook each others hats and aprons free of the ingredient debris. Each girl had a washcloth and began quickly sloping the aftermath onto the floor. We continued by scrubbing down the chair and steps before they headed off for their bath while our dessert baked.

With those adorable aprons and chief hats make make their sweethearts look like professionals but these cookies prove that they {and their mamma} are still way less than professional.

Although, their little brother didn't notice anything amiss with the cookies.

Stay tuned to see how we tried to 'fix' these cookie! What do you do when your baking turns out 'less than professional'?

Share Button

Post to Twitter

Goodwill find!

I love the goodwill!

This past month I had the weird opportunity to go overnight to stay with my parents and see a friend all by myself. It was super weird and if your a mom you know what I'm talking about. Relaxing, healthy, but...weird!

Anyways. While I was there my mom and I got to fart around a little, run some errands, and check out the new, GIANT Goodwill in my hometown. I found these:

SCORE!!!

I'm been looking, pricing, and watching for 'preschool' chairs to go with my kids table we got serveral months ago. If you don't know anything about these they normally run anywhere from $15.00 for used and as high as $30.00 brand new. I found these for $20.00 - for the SET OF 4!!! That's $5.00 a chair! They in perfectly usable shape just a little ... loved on. I decided I'd try and paint them. I'd been looking for multiple colors so they would go with our 'theme' in the playroom. The hope of having a couple chairs that were primary colored (blue, yellow, red) and a couple that where secondary colored (orange, green, purple) made the hunt even harder/more expensive.

I found this Krylon paint at Wal-Mart for ~$4.00 each. I only found 2 that were "Fusion for Plastic" so I got those and then thought I'd try the normal stuff since I hadn't found all the colors I wanted  in the plastic type. And I already owned the black attachment on top of the orange can. I highly recommend this tool if you plan to do lots of spray painting projects! I helps keep your hands (fingers) clean, keeps an even spray, and your fingers don't hurt afterward from pressing down so hard.

I laid out a very used drop clothe on my driveway while my kiddos played in the yard. I cleaned them all up with multipurpose cleaner, warm wet rag, and a magic eraser (LIFE SAVOR- everyone who has kids should have some- cheap brand works just as good) if necessary.

After srubbing them all down and make sure they were completely dry I fliped them all upside down and spread them out so the different colors wouldn't blow on the chair next them. I started on the bottom so I'd feel free to use the rest of the can on the seat and back parts that would actually show!

I started with the orange and was super disappointed in how it looked...spray painted.

I did as well as I could and then moved onto the green "Fusion for Plastic" to see if it looked any better before I completely gave up. YEP! There's a reason they made special paint for plastic. The green looked GREAT! Only wasted 1/2 can... I took the other non-plastic specific paint back and searched at other Wal-Marts near us for the other colors. I found 5 of the 6 colors I wanted in the 3 different stores. Well worth it and I didn't make extra trips, I only went to ones I was already near for other errands I was running.

SuPeR pumped about my 4 preschool chairs I got for ~$9.00 each!!!

~~~

Where is your favorite place to find good deals? Any new fun projects going on in your world?

Share Button
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Post to Twitter