simple 4th of july snacks....!

....so as soon as i spotted these liberty goldfish at my local Targé...i knew i had to do something for the upcoming 4th of july holiday....and these snacks are super simple....pretzels, chocolate kisses, and the baked red, white, and blue goldfish crackers....(i've done these before with pretzels, candy melt, and plain m&m's on top....very easy and quick to put together)....for these i had a ton of hershey's kisses from an impulse buy at costco....so decided to go with them instead of candy melts....

....line a baking sheet with pretzels (i used the square shaped ones but whatever shape you like as the base)....add a hershey's kiss, and pop in a preheated 170 degree oven for about 5 mins or until the kisses are just melted....

....here's where i had a bit of a snafu....so impatient me....at about 3 minutes....the chocolate was not really getting squishy enough to add a goldfish cracker nicely....so i increased the heat to about 250....after a couple more minutes, still not melty....so what did i do...yeah...cranked the heat again to about 300...(yep i did)....and thought....oh no maybe that was not a good idea with real chocolate......

...i ended up with crunchy hershey's kisses....which in case you were wondering refuse to melt anymore even if you attempt to nuke them in the microwave....

....so i went with plan B, or my favorite stuff....chocolate candy melts or wafers.....and this worked much better.....put the pretzels topped with a candy melt into a 170 degree oven for about 3 minutes and then immediately top with the goldfish cracker (or any other topper you have on hand...)

....and you get a bunch of red, white, and blue sweet and salty snacks for the 4th of july holiday.....!

....oh and it seems pepperidge farm is making the colors with natural ingredients too....the box says the colors come from beet juice concentrate, huito juice concentrate, watermelon juice concentrate, paprika, and paprika extract....

...so afterwards i googled "melting hershey's kisses" and it seems like they should melt just fine in a low temp oven....so lesson learned....i need to be much more patient with chocolate...! if anyone has other stories of melting chocolate badly please share them with me so i can blame the chocolate and not me... :)

....have a great week and 4th of july weekend!

tidy mom works for me wednesday

the big lebowski white russian cupcakes..!

....is this you're homework larry?....so kinda like with this storm trooper peep post....either you'll get these cupcakes or you won't!....(apologies if you don't....you'll just have to bear with me...in fact sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes, well he eats you--sorry, again sorry!)

...these were made for father's day for the big kid around here...it was a "big lebowski" themed father's day....and now he says every father's day needs a theme (remind me why i do this to myself??)....

...of course these are white russian cupcakes with kahlua buttercream (recipes that i found over at baked perfection).....

...and just briefly here are what these are supposed to be......

1. the Dude abides
2. "the jesus" as in what would jesus do (WWJD)?
3. the Dude's bowling shirt
4. donny's ashes and folgers can
5. bowling balls
6. maude's viking helmet

....most of the decorations are made from candy melt traced onto images over parchment (see this post for more details on how), the bowling shirt is made like in this post, and the bowling balls are peppermint malt balls and holes drawn on with a black food writer)...the ashes are made with wilton elegant shimmer dust and i sprinkled the same shimmer dust in gold over the rest of the cupcakes for a little something extra!....

...again, apologies if you have no clue what the heck this post means...maybe i was OVER THE LINE...!

....and happy father's day dude!....sometimes there's a man...sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place...he fits right in there....and you are that dude and an awesome dad....xxoo.

tidy mom works for me wednesday

hawaiian shirt topped brownies....!

....aren't these super fun??...i'm kinda tired of all the father's day tie stuff....and even though the 41 year old kid here does wear ties on some work days....it's usually not his garb of choice.....and doesn't a hawaiian shirt usually make you smile....?

...these are made from a combo of candy melt and royal icing (which i had left over from another project...it makes me so happy to use up stuff instread of wasting it...!)....printed out some shirt shapes from google images....then outline in candy melt (you could do this in royal icing too...but i didn't have the real thick royal icing made for good outlines and i was too lazy t make some....)...once the candy melt is dry, fill in with the royal icing...

....you may need to spread to the corners with a toothpick or butter knife.....

....you can add two colors to do the 2 tone effect....while the icing is wet use a toothpick to swirl some colors together a bit....

....once the shirt colors are dry...add decorations with candy melt (again you can use royal icing for this as well, but it needs to be stiffer than the royal icing used to fill in the shirt...)....you can get some shirt ideas from google images as well....or check the hubby's closet and try to make a shirt he already has...!

.... i figure all dad's love brownies...so these are just put on top of some boxed brownie mix and to make the shirts stick....frosted the brownies in some vanilla buttercream mixed with some store bought fudge frosting...

...and you get some cool hawaiian shirt topped frosted brownies for father's day...!

......yum!....

....happy father's day to all the awesome dad's out there....you rock.....and thank you for stopping by this neck of the woods....

p.s. dad if you are reading this, pretend to be surprised tomorrow...!

tidy mom works for me wednesday

birthday cake batter granola....!

....there are a lot of cake batter recipes out there!....like this awesome fudge, these pancakes, or these krispie treats!....can't complain though because who doesn't like cake batter stuff...?....and although i tried to find recipes that created the cake batter flavor from scratch....all i could really find were recipes that added some dry cake mix to the recipes....i guess that works and saves time too.....

.....so these granola bars are made with this stuff....

....found a couple granola bar recipes and tweaked them a little....

birthday cake batter granola bars

4 1/2 cups of quick cooking oats

14 ounce can of sweetened condensed milk

6 tablespoons of dry yellow cake mix

5 tablespoons of melted butter

...mix the oats and dry cake mix (you can add other stuff too but you may need to add a little extra condensed milk depending on how much other dry ingredients you add in)....add the milk and butter and mix everything really well....add to a foiled 9X13 pan (i also sprayed with some non stick pam)...and spread into an even layer in the pan....bake @350 for about 20 minutes (leaves them a little chewy...but if you like them crunchier bake for about 25-30 mins)...let cool and cut into bars or squares....

...this is after they baked and are just a little brown around the edges.....(the house had an awesome aroma of cake baking in the oven...!)

.....and you get birthday cake batter granola bars.....

.....OR......

.....these are just the granola bars with tops dipped in candy melt and dipped in some more non-pariels...then add a stick....(these were the kids favs)....

.....OR......

....this is just the granola bars that didn't look so great crunched up and added some mini m&m's and some fun party hats (made from candy melt).....

...and i try to kid myself that since these are "granola" that they are better for you (yeah right!) but they were pretty tasty and you do get the birthday cake flavor coming through....

....taking the rest into the ladies you drawl little one's bloodwork on a regular basis...they are awesome so they definitely deserve some tasty treats this week.....thanks for stopping by and have a week filled with awesome sauce...!

tidy mom works for me wednesday