(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!

Cloth pull-up connundrum

Cloth diapers were officially retired in my home a year ago. We were down to naptime/nighttime accidents, and I thought, surely it won't be long now.

As the cloth diapers were outgrown, they weren't replaced with larger sizes. But the reality is no two children are alike, and my first child's potty training successes weren't perfectly replicated in her brother.

A few weeks ago, I conceded defeat. Not that I think my child won't get through bedwetting, but that he will do it on his own time. And after loads of loads of morning washing of bedding and PJs, I figured something had to be done. I could continue to invest in overnight pullups, with modest success, or I could try a new tactic.

Cloth diapers worked well with my wetter, wasn't there a "big boy" option?

The reality is, while the web world may be abuzz about cloth diapers, there isn't much of a peep when it comes to its older pull-up cousin. It's like we don't discuss the challenges of bedwetting, even among preschoolers who may still be in daytime pull-up land. While you can find a few "potty-training" cloth pull-up options, cloth pull-ups are typically larger versions of cloth diapers in look and functionality (side snaps, etc.) And as we're keen to prove we can keep up with the 10 year olds on the block, that just wasn't going to cut it. Nevermind that the closest thing to a nighttime cloth pull-up option was just layering in more bulky inserts into a cloth diaper, creating extra bulk, an issue as we approach summer.

Yes, we're in a cloth pull-up connundrum. I searched off and on for a few weeks for any cloth overnight pull-up on the internet. Most options were on small mom vendors and most cloth pull-ups were designed for day (or non-heavy bedwetter) use, but I was able to finally find few overnight cloth pull-up choices to check out. (Happy Heinys and Super Undies were on the short list.)

After researching options on a few mom sites, I settled on a purchase of some overnight Super Undies. (Truthfully the deciding factor was after contacting the business and finding out they had some returned items, which saved us on our purchase.) And the other day, a box was waiting at our front door. Addressed to the little guy, who's always wanting the brown truck to deliver a box to him. We opened it up, and looked at the picture of the cool "big kid" who was in pull ups and a "super" cape and talked about his new cloth pull-ups. While he didn't get why the kid wanted to wear his cape, he proudly put the overnight pull-ups on that night, talking about his "Batman" pull-ups. (Whatever works.) And he slept soundly, really soundly that night, a far improvement from the accident-prone evening the night before from a disposable product sample that failed.

Was the cost of cloth pull-ups worth it? Time will tell. While overnight cloth pull-ups did cost more than my cloth diapers, they weren't considerably higher than the price of the all-in-ones I bought before. Given that you can easily spend $30 a month on overnight pull-ups/diaper solutions for preschoolers if you're not catching sales or couponing, I figure I'll make up the difference quickly. And if it saves me from a few loads of laundry or extra bags of trash. all the better!

Great gourds

Grabbed a few fun snaps at the farmers market we visited in Memphis. These are just plain fun!

Birthday blues

I'll admit to having had a lot of anxiety this week over birthdays. Namely, my daughter and a neighbor's. And I feel at times like a big party pooper.

It all started innocently enough. My neighbor, a good friend of ours, innocently brought up the idea of a joint birthday celebration. It's summer, many of his friends' sisters play with my children, and it kind of made sense. We'd split the food, have a relatively relaxing evening and God willing, the weather would cooperate and the kids could go outside.

And then reality hit. My idea of "friends and family" and hers weren't exactly the same. The world is her friend, and I prefer smaller get-togethers of a few closer friends. Add in that only one of my daughter's school friends could attend, and I was starting to have major anxiety. The last thing I want is for my daughter to feel left out on "her" day.

A coworker suggested I just buy her more little presents from the dollar store to make her feel like she has something to open. I disagree. No matter how much or how little we have in life, I want to emphasize quality, and appreciation, not quantity.

Instead, she and I talked about how great this was going to be that she'd have a few special friends, and we adults started planning age-neutral games that we could do outside. The fact my daughter wanted a "beach" theme opened the doors to creative outlets for their energy. My sitter even chipped in with a limbo pole that had been bought with great intentions years ago. At least it was getting used.

The treats for guests? A combination of found items - leis and inflatable beach balls, leftover from a months-ago community event and destined for the trash when our co-workers finally got motivated to clean the storeroom. I encouraged my co-hostess friend to pick up water guns, which would at least get used by the neighbor kids in our July heat, instead of a bag of crappy little rings and such, and I hope we can come up with some creative non-plastic baggie packaging.

Twenty-four hours ago, I admit I was anxious, losing sleep about whether my daughter would enjoy her big day. Today, with a little planning, a little creativity, and realizing I have the best daughter ever (who wanted to invite a pal for her baby brother!) I think we'll be just fine.

Oatmeal cookie peach cobbler

An oatmeal cookie peach cobbler was mentioned a while back on one of the myriad of travel-food shows my husband likes to watch. And after I was blessed with $18 worth of Carolina peaches from our stop at the Nashville Farmers Market, I had to come up with something to enjoy it!

Since I couldn't find anything similar to an oatmeal cookie peach cobbler in any of our cookbooks (and our PC was down), this was a take on the peach cobbler and oatmeal cookie dough recipes found in a cookbook. Worked out great, and I'm going to argue that there's a weak possibility of it being a healthier version of this summertime treat!

Oatmeal Cookie Peach Cobbler
1/2 c. wheat flour
1 1/2 c. oats (regular)
1 stick butter
1/2 cup packed plus loose (not packed) 1/3 c. brown sugar
5 c. sliced fresh peaches
4 tsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 c. water

Preheat oven to 400.

In medium saucepan combine 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon and water. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly. Add peaches. Heat through.

In bowl, mix flour, oats, butter and remaining brown sugar until crumbly.

Pour peaches into 8x8 pan. Add oatmeal mixture on top.

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes or until cooked through. Serve warm or cold.