Mardi Gras - Bake A King Cake

Today, my girls and I decided to bake a king cake in anticipation of Mardi Gras.  It was a great time baking with the kiddos and a wonderful opportunity to connect the history of the king cake to Epiphany.  To read more about the story behind the King Cake click here.
I read all about making a king cake  - it's basically a cinnamon pastry that is baked in a ring and a baby is hidden in the cake.  It is iced with a glaze and topped with sugar colored the colors of Mardi Gras - purple gold and green.
We did our own version - Here is what you need
2 cans of cinnamon rolls with icing.
1 bundt pan
green, purple, and gold colored sugar
1 little baby for hiding in the cake

That's it!
My girls made the cinnamon rolls connect into a ring and we baked our cake in a bundt pan.

 I turned it out onto our cake plate.

 They iced it with the glace that came with the rolls and we sprinkled them with the Mardi Gras colors.

 It was so easy -  they were able to do this without much help from me, and it looks great.
The last step was hiding the baby in the cake - which we did by making a tiny cut near the bottom of the cake and my big girl popped it in. 
She will take this cake to school with her tomorrow to share with her friends. 

Happy Ground Hog Day!

Have you ever tried to find snacks to celebrate Ground Hog Day?  It's kind of difficult!  I went to my trusty pinterest and found nothing, so I went surfing and found a couple of ideas that I pinned.  But as pinterest often does, it sparked my creative side and I used a combination of the ideas to come up with these:

They are shadow cookies.  I used my famous 4 ingredient cookies recipe (recipe below)- which in this case only have 3 ingredients, and combined the yellow cookies and chocolate cookies to make the "shadow" cookies.

Picture quality is lacking but you get the idea!

I wrapped them in plastic wrap and made this cute label to go on them.
Voila - a cute sweet treat to celebrate Ground Hog Day!
Enjoy!


Oops!  totally forgot the recipe!
1. 1 box of cake mix (you pick the flavor)
2. 1/2 cup of oil
3. 2 eggs
Mix - scoop out into small spoonfuls - bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.  - SUPER SIMPLE
In this case, I used one yellow cake mix and one chocolate cake mix. 

Egg Nog Cupcakes

Our little town has a tour of homes each year with a sweet shop to raise money. This year I made egg nog cupcakes to donate for the sweet shop. They were fabulous, but I must warn you, they were so rich!


Here's the recipe:
1 box French vanilla cake mix
1 stick of butter, melted
1 cup of egg nog
3 eggs
1 tsp. nutmeg

Line 24 muffin cups and preheat oven to 350.
Combine ingredients, mix on low speed for 30 sec. Then up to medium speed for two minutes. Bake for 20-25 minutes.
Let cool, ice with egg nog butter cream. Icing recipe below:

3 1/2 cups sifted powder sugar.
1 stick of butter softened
4 to 6 tbs of egg nog
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Cream butter and 3-4 tbs of egg nog, add nutmeg then powdered sugar. Cream and add egg nog until its thin enough to spread.

Warning: this will put you in sugar shock and holiday bliss... At the same time!


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