Happy 2nd Birthday!!

We had a nautical themed birthday for Sean and his birthday twin Joia.  (They were born 5 hours apart in the same hospital with the same doctor.)

I was excited about the frosting, because I finally got a chance to try out the ombre effect I had been seeing on my favorite cake blogs!

The mermaid is a Monster High doll and the seaweed is made from sugar glass.  I made the shells out of white chocolate.  The pops are marshmallows covered in white chocolate, dipped in graham cracker crumbs, with a goldfish crackers as a decoration.

(Photos by Cindy Apple) 

I found this on Amazon, used some puffy stickers to decorate! 

I was excited to try out this frosting technique for the first time!
The inside of the cake was reverse ombre in sea green.

Marshmallow pops! I dipped them in white chocolate and graham cracker crumbs
and stuck a fish to them.

Found these on Amazon. Perfect! 

Sean's Cake

Joia's Cake!

Gift bags! 

The gift bags contained a sailor hat, Pirate rubber ducky, some stickers and Scooby snacks.

Avocado Banana Toddler Cookies

He can never wait for them to cool all the way!

Avocado Banana cookies (with a few chocolate chips) 

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup of mini chocolate chips

1/2 cup raisins (re-hydrated by soaking 5 mins in boiling water/drained)

1/4 cup butter
1 ripe avocado
1 ripe banana (The riper the better.  Riper bananas bring more sweetness)

1/4 - 1/3 cup pure apple juice concentrate (thawed) depending on how sweet you want it. Increase juice for a sweeter cookie.

2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup unsifted white flour
1 cup unsifted wheat flour
1/4 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
4 TBLSP of organic flax seeds

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat oven to 375ºF. 

Stir flour with baking soda, rolled oats, cinnamon and flax seeds; set aside.

In mixer, blend butter, ripe banana, avocado, raisins, vanilla and apple concentrate at medium speed until creamy.

Add eggs one at a time.

Mix on low speed until incorporated.  It turns a pretty light green and looks smooth.

Gradually blend dry mixture into creamed mixture. (Or if you are using a Ninja mixer, just blend all together for about 1 min)

Stir in mini chocolate chips.

Drop by tablespoon onto parchment lined cookie sheets and smash down a little with back of wet spoon if you want more of a cookie look. (These cookies do not flatten while baking) . Bake for 12-13 minutes.

You end up with lovely soft cake like cookies that toddlers love to eat!

*If I am making these for my older kids, I will add 1/4 cup of brown sugar or coconut sugar, or you could add a couple of squeezes of honey.  If you do that, blend it with the banana avocado mash.


*If you feel like they are too soft, you can always increase your butter to a full stick.  That will help them be less doughy.

Toddler cookies (So easy my toddler can help me make them!)

I just got a Ninja BL820 Ultima Kitchen System and I really wanted to try coming up with ways to make some of my healthy kid recipes using the larger food processor attachment.

These toddler cookies are not only easy, they are pretty healthy, and super yummy.  They are also vegan and dairy free if that is something you worry about.

Ingrediants

2 ripe bananas

1/3 cup mini dark chocolate chips

1/3 cup of homemade peanut butter (Just peanuts I blended in the ninja with a squeeze of honey. SO GOOD!) 

2 heaping TBLS of ground unsweetened dried coconut (Ground down from shredded to almost powder in the Ninja and kept in a jar to add to recipes) 

1 1/2 cup of rolled oats

2 heaping TBLS of flax seed

And a adorable helper...

 First we added the bananas, PB, coconut, & flax seed and blended down to smoothie texture. About 1 minute in a Ninja.

Scrape down the sides

Add the mini chips and the oats

 A squeeze of honey 

(This step is optional: I use homemade PB so it doesn't have 

quite the sweetness as the store stuff has) 

Run on mix for about 30 seconds until it looks a bit like this

Place on greased or lined cookie sheet

Smash down to shape like a cookie. These do not flatten at all when baked.

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes and they will be done! They look about the same on top, but crisper on the bottom.

They should be easy to transfer to a cooling rack.

The hardest part is keeping your helper out of them 

until they are cool enough to eat! 

Have kitchen assistant place on pretty dish for photo finish:

"Future food designer for photo shoots"

Enjoy!!

 A treat you can give your tots and not feel guilty about!

Cake Walk

I thought I would post some of the cakes I've made for birthdays, weddings, and school events over the last few years.  (Basically, whichever cakes I happen to have in my photo folder.)

Sylvia's 5th birthday

Sean's do-over cake (He won a cake that his brother stole in the 2nd grade.
He told me the story, so I re-created the cake as a surprise for him. He LOVED it!)

Sylvia's school potluck

Sylvia's 7th birthday 

Jessica's Groomsman cake

Sean and Joia's first birthdays

Sylvia's 8th birthday

Double Chocolate avocado banana flax cookies (Made with coconut sugar)

I discovered something new in the store!  Coconut sugar!  I've heard it mentioned a few times in mommy blogs as a healthier sugar alternative, but have not seen it before.  I found it today and it inspired me to make some extra special cookies for our toddler guest and his mom.  I know his mom really likes chocolate, so I knew I wanted to use the good stuff and make it extra chocolaty.

These turned out divine.  They are fluffy and soft, but super chocolaty.  You can't even taste the avocado and maybe only a hint of the banana when they are super hot, but once they cool the chocolate takes front and center.

I look forward to learning more about this coconut sugar too.  This is good stuff! It has a brown sugar vibe but the texture is lighter.  It almost has a coffee aftertaste. 

INGREDIENTS

1 bag of Dark Chocolate Baking Chips (Dark chocolate is better for you!)
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
1 ripe avocado
1 ripe banana
1 cup coconut sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup unsifted white flour
1 cup unsifted wheat flour
¹/₄ cup rolled oats
¹/₄ cup unsweetened dark cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 TBLSP of flax seeds
¹/₂ teaspoon salt

INSTRUCTIONS

Heat oven to 375ºF. Stir flour with baking soda, rolled oats, flax seeds, cocoa powder and salt; set aside. In large mixing bowl, beat butter, smashed banana, avocado with sugar at medium speed until creamy. Add eggs one at a time and vanilla. Mix on low speed until incorporated. Gradually blend dry mixture into creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips. 

Drop by tablespoon onto parchment liked cookie sheets and smash down with wet fingers or back of spoon (These cookies do not flatten while baking) . Bake for 11 minutes.

Watermelon and Strawberry smoothie

This is the time of year where watermelon and strawberries are ripe, delicious and pretty much always on sale at the store.  We bought a huge watermelon earlier and some 'buy one get one free' strawberries, chopped them up and threw them in the freezer. I filled the blender with mostly watermelon, a few strawberries, some juice and about a half cup of vanilla yogurt.
The girls love them!

Can I have S'more Peanut Butter Quesadilla

Sylvia wanted something sweet, so I looked around the cupboards and came up with this dreamy little treat with stuff we had on hand.

Melty yumminess!

Ingredients: Tortilla, mini chocolate chips, Peanut Butter, mini marshmallows, cinnamon

Spread Peanut butter on tortilla

Sprinkle a few mini chips

Crumble on graham cracker

Add a couple of marshmallows

butter hot pan (medium heat)

Fold and cook

Finish with a sprinkle of cinnamon and watch them disappear!

The first thing Sylvia said when she finished hers was "Can I have some more??"

Holy Yum! 

Yoink!!

He can never wait for things to come off the cooling rack! 

The eating rainbow

I made a fruit salad snack for the kids.  They pretty much inhaled it (Marshmallows first, of course)