Not my cooking disaster

I snuck outside this evening to drop in a few quick pea seeds before the next batch of rain. What I didn't realize was my garden helpers had once again abandoned me.

I found them at our kitchen table, eagerly working on their "dinner." Having talked their babysitter into ponying up a tomato before they left, they had sliced it in half and squeezed it like an orange to juice it - as a dressing for her fruit salad of apples and ground cherries. Apparently it was an epic fail.

"I washed it out," my six year old confessed. "It got badder and badder; it was disgusting."

Instead, they opted to make a second dressing of orange juice and water, "and then we stopped. By our 15th bite, it got badder and badder with every bite."

I suppose I could have talked her out of her fruit salad idea in the first place. But to succceed at anything, sometimes you need a few stumbling blocks, too!

(Hidden) Raspberry Devil's Food Cupcakes - A recipe for cheaters

Rule No. 1 about making treats for school or daycare. Waiting until the last minute typically does not work, unless you're running through the checkout line.

I had great intentions about my daughter's cupcakes for daycare today. Planned a baking night for last night. Talked it up with my girl, down to how we'd decorate. And then reality hit: Later dinner than originally planned, stopped to chat with friends along our walk, need to scrub stinky cow smell off my kids (they went to a dairy farm for a field trip), and meltdowns thereafter.

The end result? Me waking up at the unholy time of 5:30 a.m. to crank out some cupcakes.

And it was with the best of intentions. I was prepared with my box mix and frosting picked out at the supermarket (I cave when it comes to daycare treats; the boxes are more tangible to my girl than a bunch of cocoa powder and powdered sugar!). I grab the eggs, the cake mix, and search for the vegetable oil.

And search. And search.

And we're out.

At this point I have two choices: Make a frantic run to the store, losing another half-hour, or run with it.

I ran. After all, you can always sub out applesauce, right?

Except I had no plain applesauce. I had blueberry pomegrante and raspberry acai. Not for the faint of heart! I reason that with enough frosting, no child will care, and I grab the raspberry acai, which in the container has a powerful flavor. (There's no "hint" of raspberry there.). I mix one 1/2-cup container raspberry applesauce with the cake mix, 3 eggs and 1 1/3 c. water and baked according to directions. Turned out beautiful. No strong raspberry taste to it.

I think we can celebrate after all!

Baking snow

Laura Ingalls Wilder, I ain't.

Sewing more than a seam or button doesn't happen here. My baking endeavors are here and there. And I bristle at the first sign of snow.

But the other day, when we were once again blessed with a lot of snow, we opted for an unusual afternoon activity. Making "sugar snow."

For those of you not well-versed in the Little House books, a wintertime treat was taking the maple syrup, boiling and pouring over fresh snow until it hardens into a candylike consistency.

The Hungry Reader describes how it was done:

Our favorite moment comes when Laura and her cousins scoop up big plates of snow
and Grandma pours a ribbon of steaming syrup onto each one. The syrup hardens
into candy, which is devoured immediately. The children go back for again and
again another helping, for "maple sugar never hurt anybody."

I figured how hard could it be to recreate? I had a recipe in a cookbook I'd been meaning to explore, and decided there was no better time than now to play a little.

If I was a smart woman, I would have followed more conventional instructions. Maybe even used a candy thermometer. But no, in my arrogance, I poured syrup into a measuring cup and stuck it in the microwave.

All good until the first round boiled over, leaving a sticky mess in its wake.

The second round was more contained, but clearly didn't get hot enough. Still, I pulled out a bowl filled with snow from our backyard, poured the hot syrup over it, and ended up with a taffy-like consistency.

The kids were intrigued, though weren't pleased that the candy was nearly permanently stuck to their teeth.


Still, the experience was an interesting one. "We're baking snow!" my daughter declared to her dad.