yeast on the rise

Emma had to complete her first science project this year. She tested which yeast was best in our regular bread recipe--instant or active dry. I must say that I am so glad we homeschool, if only to have avoided projects like this. There were two good things to come out of this though. Now I know Emma is perfectly capable of making our weekly batch of bread and I can hand that chore off to her. Also, I had been using instant yeast all along but her results showed that active dry actually will produce a better loaf with our recipe.

sweet treats

My children are more interested in having free time traipsing from house to house with their friends than actually doing much with our weekly themed activities. That is okay. I think if we can manage to get one or two in a week then we will have made some great memories by the end of the summer.

This week, we had a bake sale. It was good for me to try and keep my controlling nature from getting out of hand. If it had all been about what I wanted, our bake sale would have looked like this fantastically lovely one from Bird and Berry.


Instead, I really tried to let the kids control the event.

I made the chocolate chip cookies and Emma made everything else. She baked white and chocolate cupcakes, rice krispies treats and brownies.


And look! People came!


Slade rode around carrying a sign on his scooter and yelling, "Bake Sale!" When he came home after his first round, I told him he was doing our advertising. He didn't know what advertising was so I explained, telling him it was essential to a good sale. After the second round of scooter marketing, he came in hot and sweaty and declared, "Advertising is hard work." True. True.


In the end, they collected about $34. The kids were thrilled. I will save the lesson about revenue vs. profit for another time.

oh cupcake

Slade requested "lots and lots of cupcakes" for the party after his baptism. I love cupcakes and was happy to oblige. I made them all with my hand mixer since my Bosch was in the repair shop. I made even more for book club on Wednesday. I have eaten WAY too many cupcakes this week to say the least.

I thought I would share some of the recipes I used as they are some of my favorites.

This is probably my favorite of all cupcake recipes right now. When I gave some to one of my friends, she said it was like eating sunshine.

Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcakes
from Kraft

1 pkg. (2-layer size) white cake mix

1 pkg. (3.4 oz.) lemon instant pudding

1 cup water

4 egg whites

2 Tbsp. oil

1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter, softened

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

1 pkg. (16 oz.) powdered sugar

HEAToven to 350ºF.

BEAT first 5 ingredients in large bowl with mixer on low speed until moistened. (Batter will be thick.) Beat on medium speed 2 min. Spoon into 24 paper-lined muffin cups.

BAKE 21 to 24 min. or until toothpick inserted in centers comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 min.; remove to wire racks. Cool completely.

BEAT cream cheese, butter and juice with mixer until well blended. Gradually add sugar, beating on low speed after each addition until well blended. Spread onto cupcakes.

I intended to jazz up the white cake mix recipe with these instructions from Saucy's Sprinkles:

Mix one cake mix package in mixer with three eggs, 1/2 cup melted butter and one cup water or milk. Blend on low speed for a minute and scrape down sides of the bowl. Beat on high for 2-3 minutes until smooth and lighter in color.

My mom was too on top of things though and made just regular cupcakes. They were still super yummy because I frosted them with this frosting recipe from Our Best Bites. I used almond extract and it was so good. I usually double this recipe so I can make big swirls on top.

Perfect Cupcake Frosting and Filling

3 T Flour
1/2 C milk (whole milk is best)
1/2 C real butter (not a cheap store brand)
1/2 C sugar (that's granulated sugar, not powdered sugar)
1 t vanilla extract, or other flavor

Whisk together the flour and the milk. Heat in a small sauce pan on medium heat. Whisk continuously until it starts to thicken. Let it cook, while stirring, until it looks like pudding (you should be able to see the bottom of the pan when you stir it). Remove from heat and let cool completely.

It an electric stand mixer, beat the butter and the sugar for a minute or two until well combined and fluffy. Then while beating, add in the thickened milk mixture and the vanilla.
Beat on high for 7-9 minutes.

The chocolate cupcakes I made from scratch didn't really work out. I would have been better off to have used a mix. However, I really did like this chocolate buttercream recipe. I ran out of vanilla and used orange extract instead.

Chocolate Buttercream
from All Recipes

1 cup butter softened
4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup baking cocoa
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk
dash of salt

Cream butter. Gradually beat in powdered sugar, cocoa and vanilla. Add enough milk until frosting reaches spreading consistency.

Happy Baking!

make a rainbow

I originally saw the idea for a Rainbow Cake on Hostess with the Mostess. Followed the link to the tutorial here. This is what I did:

Make two boxes of white cake mix according to package directions.

Put about 1 1/2 cups of batter each into six bowls.
Mix in food coloring. Use gel food coloring. Not the liquid kind.


Pour about 2/3 cups batter in pan for the first three colors and about 1/3 cups batter for the last three. Reverse the order for the second pan. Bake. (I don't remember the exact times but I did add additional time for these to cook since the batter was doubled. I started with the suggested baking time and then checked every few minutes from there.)


When your niece asks if she can lick the bowls, don't just assume she means with the help of a spoon. She and little brother will end up just sticking their hands in all that wonderful color.


When the cake is cooled you can frost however you wish. Mine was all crooked but I didn't let that bother me! It makes such a pretty cake. I think this will be fun to use with different color schemes on different occasions. I love color!

painted cookies

Today's activity was to make sugar cookies. I decided to redo last year's painted cookies.


I also had decided last night at about 7:30 to cook our turkey that has been sitting in the freezer. I thawed it (mostly) in cold water for a few hours and then cooked it overnight. This was my first turkey completely solo and it actually turned out! So tonight we had another Thanksgiving-esque dinner with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and cranberry sauce. And now we have leftovers! I just need to call my Aunt Laurie and get her most delicious crescent roll recipe so we can have turkey sandwiches.

daily december: 12

Today when Dave called about 2:00, he sounded surprised (and thrilled) that I was in a good mood. How sad is that? I guess I better work on the attitude some more. No one likes a complainer!

I was in a good mood because I was managing to entertain my kids without the TV! Hurray for me. We went outside for a little while.
Then they were able to go sledding with our neighbor this afternoon for about an hour. I opted to stay home with Sawyer. Emma walked in the door and said, "That was awesome!" I thought it was awesome that I had a fairly quiet house for an hour too.

Afterwards, they wanted to watch a movie and I nearly said yes BUT instead I remembered this great cookie idea from Pioneer Woman. We made painted sugar cookies. I used my favorite secret sugar cookie recipe and then the kids painted them with egg yolk paint.

I later tried to add the glaze outline but that didn't work all that well.

We also made some regular sugar cookies with sprinkles.


YUMMY!