The Half Birthday Treat (Project)

At school, H's half birthday is celebrated since he was born in the summertime and school will never be in session on the actual date of his birth. I see all these other parents carrying in a package of store-bought cupcakes for birthday treats (we're very lucky there are no allergies in his class!) and so I was trying to mentally guess what character treat we'd be in search of the weekend before his half b-day. He came home from school a few days prior and announced he knew exactly what he wanted me to make. Cake pops. Not just any cake pops. Strawberry cake pops. With chocolate outsides.

Now, our family makes more of a cake ball, and we've never felt the need to put sticks inside; instead we prefer to eat them by the handful before the chocolate shell melts on our fingers. The stick element would be a new challenge for me, but I was confident I would figure it out easily.

I was able to get the cake mix and frosting on sale (strawberry is not always the easiest flavor to find!) and I bought three pounds of melting chocolate from Appletree Lane, which has the BEST chocolate hands down for candy making. Visit them here. 

https://www.facebook.com/shopappletreelane/

I also bought the 50-ct. Wilton sticks using a 40% off coupon at Michaels so that was a bargain too.

I was SO happy I thought to re-read the family recipe prior to being gone for part of the day--there are several steps that take a long time to complete! I started that morning with baking each cake (I made two) by following the box directions exactly.

While the cake was still warm, I crumbled it up into a large bowl, and then added the can of frosting and mixed well. It looks like dough at this point.

The dough has to be refrigerated at least three hours or even overnight. We were going to be gone for several hours so I knew that would be long enough.

Once we were home again, I balled up the cake ball 'dough'. I'm sure a melon-baller would've made this easier but instead I used a large spoon and my hands (tip: REMOVE YOUR RINGS!).
Critical step: cake balls must be frozen to retain their shape when dipped.
Critical error: putting the sticks into the balls before freezing. I am quite sure this was a big downfall of my vision of the "perfect treats".

Once frozen, I attempted to melt the chocolate (best tip: microwave a pile of the chocolates for 30 seconds, then stir, then 30 more seconds, and it will be perfect with just a few pieces of solid chocolate that will quickly melt when stirred again) and then dip each ball on a stick,

This is where I got mega-frustrated, to the point that I am pretty sure I yelled, "Don't ever expect me to make these again!!!". The sticks were falling out. The balls were spinning on the stick and not picking up the chocolate evenly. The balls would fall into the chocolate. I also spent $3 on what I thought would be a cool Wilton cake pop stand but that was a fail too. The balls would bump each other, or the base, when I tried to stand them up to dry in it. I ended up using it just to get them to dry, and then I laid them out in a Tupperware container to transport them to school.

Ugly little things, aren't they?!!?

My vision was gone and I was mad. I literally spent almost five hours (FIVE!) trying to turn a disaster in the kitchen into birthday treats. My Type-A personality was so disappointed these didn't go as easily as I expected, nor did they turn out as I had pictured in my mind. However, as messy as they looked, they did end up tasting amazing.

Next year around the beginning of February, you'll find me at the grocery store bakery buying ready-made cupcakes. I'll leave the cake ball making to my stepmom, who clearly is far better at this than I am!!  Here is her recipe, better explained than I did above:

100th Day of School

We recently celebrated H's 100th day of school. His teacher makes a pretty big deal out of it, which was exciting for the kids. They had different activities planned, like counting 100 snack items (Goldfish, Craisins, Chex, pretzels), stringing 100 Fruit Loops on a necklace, sorting colored beads in groups of 10, etc. The homework assignment was to wear 100 items of your choice.

Thankfully we were given said assignment several weeks ago, and I had plenty of time to go on Pinterest and save several over-the-top cute pins of shirts that others had made with their kids. I was so excited to show my son my ideas but my excitement quickly faded... "...No, too girly. Too many stars (umm, aren't there supposed to be 100?). I don't like the gumballs. I need something ninja." He then took my phone and started scrolling through pins at lightning speed until he announced, "That's it! That's my shirt! Can you make that, Mom?"

He had found a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle made out of craft pom poms. I am over all things turtles, but he is not. But he was very clear on his vision, "But Mom, it needs to be Mikey, not Raph!"

I spent Sunday afternoon hot gluing pom poms to a cheap dry-fit style shirt I picked up at Wal-Mart for $3 on clearance. I was able to find the colors of pom poms I needed at Michael's after first checking JoAnn Fabrics. JoAnn's only had giant 1000-count multi-color bags that I would never use again so I was glad I didn't settle for those.

Some other cute ideas I saw at school that day--a girl had a baby blanket-turned-cape with 100 glow in the dark stars, a couple of kids had hats on with 100 gems or jewels, another girl had a tee with 100 little plastic peace signs glued to it, one had stuck foam flowers to hers, and one simply had a shirt with 100 tally marks on it. That mom is clearly wiser than I!

Our preschool had a bulletin board I designed (thank you, Pinterest!) that said, "This is what 100 looks like!" and we had each child bring in a bag with anything they wanted as long as the items totaled 100. We had pasta, Shopkins, books, stickers, coins, crayons, chocolate chips, popcorn, coffee beans, cotton balls, pencils and more. It turned out great.

So here it is, the "100 Ninja" shirt. Ideally, it would've said 100 DAY Ninja, but I had to have an even 100 on it! Not the easiest task. Was it memorable? It sure was.

100 Ninja shirt

Maybe next year I'll try to convince him to wear 100 Lego pieces on his pants. :)