Love Pops

  Cake+frosting=cake pops.
 Sounds easy, right?

yeah, I thought so too.
I went over to Pioneer Woman's Blog and read the tutorials from her and Bakerella about how to go about making these cake pops I had heard so much about.  After looking at the pictures and reading both their tutorials I felt confident in my ability to pull it off
(strike one against the momma)
I made a chocolate cake, and let it cool as I went up to get Cate ready for bed...only to come back to this.

 

yeah, he's a peach. 

So I had a trial cake I thought, and good thing, because I needed it.  The cake pops seemed pretty much like the oreo truffle balls that we make so I thought what the heck, I'll just use the WHOLE container of frosting. 

(strike two mommy)

yeah, this is what happens when you use the whole container of frosting.  No matter how long I froze them, they would always be too weak to stay on the stick.  

While I was working on these, I made another funfetti cake for try #2 the next day.  I officially was beaten on day one..

Day 2.  

Funfetti Cake and Frosting

While we were freezing the next batch of pops, we went ahead and melted the chocolate again to perfect our dipping skills for the "good" batch.

{one of my favorite pictures, she's wearing her great grandmothers apron}

I think we got it down...

 

So on the pink we went...

 

ahhhhh,another love day down, but all in all I think it turned out well.  Cake Pop Experiment #1 done.  Maggie already has plans for Cate's first birthday....since you know, mommy KNOWS what she's doing now.  Faith, she haz it in me!

Love Day Cookies

I mentioned in my last post that we had friends down two weekends ago, during our HUGE storm (which is STILL causing headaches) and one of the things we did with the kids before the left on Sunday was to make some yummy "love day" Sugar Cookies...

Our dough was pretty sticky (to put it mildly) even though we refrigerated it over night so we had to use LOTS of flour.  Poor Annie, I teased her horribly about just letting the kids have fun while they decorated, but let's not lie...if it had just been Maggie and I, I probably would have been pretty picky about the decorations! uhhhh...I mean, I ALWAYS let my children do whatever they want, LOL...SURE...

 

That's Maggie's concentrating face...

Her first group of cutouts..I tried to ignore all the left over dough though and pretend to be calm about it.  There were more cookies to be made after all...

Ryan was so cute cutting his out.  He was so precise...his momma teaches him well.  

 

You can see Annie in the background helping Ry decorate their hearts...I just let Maggie go to town.  Yeah, I'm brave like that.

Maggie moved on to small hearts...once again, paying CLOSE attention to how she was cutting them out...see...

 

Ry doesn't look that impressed does he?  He was waiting for her to finish up that batch so he could make another one.  I love all the flour on his shirt cuffs in this picture.  It was a dirty job, but he was willing to do it!

Don't worry Ry, she's quick...

 

Aren't they cute?  They had so much together.  Maggie loved having Ry come play... they were hilarious playing Wii together.  They both are pretty strong willed, and have mothers that let them be, sooo, it was funny watching them.

After we made a few batches of hearts we moved on to making some animal cookies.  Of course we had to make elephants, they are our favorite after all...

  We also made snails, hedgehogs, and wolves.  They turned out pretty cute for basic sugar cookies.  

Fionn woke up from his nap (he wasn't feeling so great that weekend) and eyed up the goodies.  As soon as he came downstairs he ran into the kitchen and excitedly yelled "COOKIES"  

Fionn LOVES cookies! 

 

Yummmm!  Who could resist these though?  They did a GREAT job, and it was relatively painless clean up!

I have a lot more to post about, we were busy, busy, busy this past week.  Maggie was off for the entire week last week, and they've yet to have a full day of school since the storm hit TEN days ago.  And it's STILL snowing.  We've gotten 37+ inches since it all started and for Pittsburgh, that is CRAZY!  We hope everyone had a great LOVE day, and we can't wait to share with you the Valentines that Maggie made for her class!!