Disney Tsum Tsum Pretzel Snacks

Since I love all things cute and tiny - I am a huge fan of Tsum Tsums!

What's a Tsum Tsum you ask? They are cute plush versions of your favorite Disney characters that can be stacked.  They were originally created for Disney Japan since Japan loves all that is cute and tiny as well - but the craze has caught on all over the world.  The name comes from a Japanese term for stack and you pronounce it "soom soom" 

Aren't they the cutest? I am trying to get my kids to collect but they are not as interested as I would have been at that age! My daughter also has this super cute Tsum Tsum t-shirt...

So I was inspired to make them in pretzel snack form!

They actually came together pretty quickly since the base is a square pretzel topped with discs of candy melt circles.  Details are added with other candies, sprinkles, more melted candy melt, and edible food writers.

You can mix and match your favorite characters.  They pretty much all come in Tsum Tsum form these days and not just plushies either - there are plastic or vinyl figures, games, and all kinds of other trinkets, clothes, and stuff plastered with Tsumy cuteness.

My favs are still Mickey and Minnie and Donald and Daisy

But Pooh and his friends come in a close 2nd!

Do you love Tsum Tsums? Which are your favs?? 

Have a great week and thanks for stopping by!

Disney Tsum Tsum Pretzel Snacks

by Michelle Clausen May 20 - 2017

Ingredients

• Pretzel squares
• Various color candy melt wafers (plus extra for melting to attach to pretzel and adding details)
• Various candy and sprinkles (m and m's, candy coated sunflower seeds, heart shaped sprinkles, various colors of non-pariels)
• Black edible food marker

Instructions:

1. Melt wafers in a microwave safe bowl and add to a freezer bag.  Snip an end and attach wafer to pretzel square.  Eeyore is made with purple disc and part cream colored disc.
2. Use more melted candy in coordinated colors to attach other candy/sprinkles as the detail.  Follow pictures for directions.
3. Add additional detail with edible food writers.

Prep time: 45 minutes Yield: about 24 pretzel snacks

Disney's Frozen Themed Oatmeal Cream Pie Cookies

Well here it is the first day of Spring and we have a forecast for more snow in NJ! Par for the course with this Winter season on the East Coast.  In fact the kids have a half day due to the predicted snowy weather.  Go Figure! 

So as a last winter treat, I'm sharing some Disney Frozen themed oatmeal cream pie cookies!

Have you seen this cereal in stores? A "Collector's Edition" Disney Frozen cereal by Kellogg's. It has Snow and Ice Crystal marshmallows! Think Lucky Charms cereal but with blue and white marshmallows.  

#FROZENALLTHETHINGS

It works because my kiddo immediately had to have this cereal.  We don't eat junkie cereals as "cereal" but I do let them have it as treats.  I had to make something with them so decided on some oatmeal cookies, because not only are they delicious but I also swapped out some of the oatmeal for the Frozen cereal.  

I used the Vanishing Oatmeal Cookie recipe that comes on the Quaker Oatmeal can lid! Can't go wrong with that recipe.

I also added dried blueberries in place of raisins to keep with the "blue" theme.

Add to make them into oatmeal cream pie cookies, add a huge slather of some light blue tinted filling.  I used a mix of marshmallow fluff and cream cheese.  

And homemade ones are so much tastier than the store bought ones (in my opinion anyway!)

Make them today and devour one on Winter's last hurrah.  

If you don't have winter worries at all, make them anyway since there are probably a gazillion more #FROZENALLTHETHINGS to come since there WILL be a Frozen 2 movie.  (Um that's a no brainer Disney!) You can also get your Frozen fix on by checking out Frozen Fever which is a short you get when you see the Cinderella movie. (PS There is cake in it!!)

Have a totally awesome weekend and thanks for swinging by! More spring-y treats to come soon!

Frozen Themed Oatmeal Cream Pie Cookies (adapted from Quaker's Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies recipe) 

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) plus 6 tablespoons butter, softened
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 and 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt 
• 1 and 1/2 cups quick or old fashioned, uncooked oats
• 1 and 1/2 cups of Frozen cereal
• 1 cup dried blueberries

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Mix butter and sugars until fluffy.  Add eggs and vanilla and mix.  Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.  Add 1/2 flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix well.  Add remaining flour mixture.  Mix the oats and cereal together and gently mix into the batter.  Add in dried blueberries.  
• Drop rounded spoonfuls onto parchment paper baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.  
• For filling, mix 2 cups of marshmallow fluff with 1/4 cup of cream cheese.  
• Spread between 2 cooled cookies and eat!

Disney's Frozen Characters as Gingerbread Men

It's that time of year again, that time of year when I make gingerbread cookies. And not just any old gingerbread, gingerbread men in my favorite characters.  I've done them before a few times and it's just so fun to do.  Here are some of my past cookie experiments.  

Super Hero Gingerbread Men and Women

The Peanuts in Gingerbread Men form

And my first attempt in a blog post a long long (LONG!) time ago of Star Wars Clone Troopers and C3PO which started my slight obsession with making fun characters all gingerbreaded up.

This year was Frozen because 1) My 7 year old now asks me to call her Queen Elsa 2) We must Frozen ALL THE THINGS and 3) I love Frozen as much as my 7 year old (shhhh, don't tell anyone)

I love how they all came out especially Elsa, Olaf, and Anna!

 See the more including a tutorial here over SheKnows!

Big Hero 6 - Baymax Vanilla Macarons

Did anyone go see the new Disney movie Big Hero 6 this weekend? With 3 kiddos (a 10 year old and 7 year old twins) this one was a no brainer.  Robots AND Heros? Yeah total no brainer.  And Disney definitely has their movie formula pretty down to a science.  Young kids that lose parents/parent figures early on and must persevere through the hardships to realize the true meaning of loving something and the goodness that triumphs over evil.  Yup, it works well so why mess with a good thing?!

The robot in the story is the lovable Baymax.  Baymax is a personal healthcare companion programmed to fix anyone in distress.  He's pretty much the most awesome robot ever and totally inspired me to make some Baymax macarons.  Is that weird that I automatically said, yes I'm going to make him in macaron form? 

Once you have your macaron mixture combined, pipe the characters onto parchment by tracing from a printout underneath the parchment paper

I've only made macarons one other time, and didn't even post about it.  I used the Italian method, and they came out ok.  Definitely far from perfect but at least they were recognizable as macarons!  I used the same method for these Baymax ones.  I'm not even going to try to post directions, but you can see a step by step How To over at Annie's Eats.  She posted a great tutorial here on how to make macarons using this Italian method.   My one suggestion (which everyone seems to agree on) is to measure all your ingredients with a scale.  It's pretty easy to do, so don't get worried that its a lot of extra trouble.

Just to give you and idea of how un-perfect mine were, check out the underside.  They should be flat not like this.  My trouble is knowing when they are done.  You don't want them to brown too much, but you need them done enough to not stick when trying to remove them.  Depending on your oven, you should bake them for about 8 minutes then check them every minute to see if they are done.  

I had some vanilla beans so thought it would be the perfect flavor for Baymax.  Add his accents with black and white melted candy wafers and some large black flat sprinkles for eyes.  

Even though Baymax is a robot, he's got a heart of gold.  He will make you cry.  

Chocolate buttercream seemed to fit well with his center.  

And Disney totally set this up for a sequel, if they want to go this route.  Overall I really enjoyed the movie and the kiddos gave it a big thumbs up.  Right there on par with Guardians of the Galaxy.  

For anyone looking for the recipe, please head over to Annie's Eats for her step by step tutorial.  I followed it pretty much exactly, except adding some vanilla bean seeds (scrapped from one vanilla bean pod) when she points out to add color/flavor.  Once the macaron mixture is ready to be piped, I traced it onto parchment on top of some Baymax templates that I printed out from Google (thanks Google!).  The chocolate buttercream, is store bought, to save some time.  You can use any type of flavoring for the centers since vanilla goes so well with pretty much anything.  

Did you see Big Hero 6 and if so what did you think???

Disney's Frozen Character Pretzel Snacks

Are you guys over Disney's Frozen yet? Has it jumped the shark yet?? I mean it's EVERYWHERE.  Frozen clothes, Frozen dolls and toys, Frozen bedding, Frozen books, Frozen cups, Frozen lunch boxes, Frozen bags, Frozen balloons, Frozen decals and stickers, Frozen make-up, Frozen umbrellas, Frozen wigs (WIGS!), Frozen tiaras, Frozen guitars, Frozen beach towels, and on and on and on and on.

But I can't complain.  Disney really knocked it out of the ballpark with this one.  It's a great movie and all kids love it.  I think we've seen movie or heard the soundtrack thousands of times (literally!).  

So let's FROZEN ALL THE SWEETS! 

I made these Frozen Character Cupcakes earlier this year 

But I thought some more simple treats were needed - and you guys already know about my love of sweet and salty pretzel snacks.  So here you go, Disney's Frozen - inspired pretzel snacks!

Make them for your next Frozen themed party (and there WILL be Frozen themed parties!) or just make some for your own Queen Elsa, Princess Anna, Olaf and Sven fans.  

See the full tutorial over at SheKnows!

Maleficent Movie Cupcakes

Wow it's been awhile since I made cupcakes - I think I may have gone into a little withdrawal! And what better reason to make cupcakes than the new Disney Maleficent movie that opened this past weekend.  I've not been able to see it yet but the the trailer and previews look great.  Like Lord of the Rings meets Disney Princesses.

I'm staying away from the movie reviews too.  The couple that showed up in my FB feed didn't look promising.  But I'm going to stay optimistic for the arch Disney Villain from Sleeping Beauty - The Mistress of All Evil.

For these cupcakes, I went with the look from the books - not necessarily the Angelina Jolie all black look.  The cupcakes are vanilla tinted green with some black swirls.

And her horns (or is that a hat??) are made from these, Cinnamon Churros snacks!

I was on the prowl for some Bugle snacks for the horns, but of course I could not locate them in any store within a 15 mile radius of my house.  Go figure.  So I had to make do and trimmed the churros for the horn look and then dipped them in black candy melt.  The churros are actually a much better combination with the candy melts.

The icing is very light green and purple swirled frosting.  The swirled look is done by adding each color to a piping bag, then adding those 2 bags to a third bag.  Simple and it works great!

I made some mini maleficents too.

And if you fast forward past the summer and pretend it's Halloween, they also could pass for some some crazy bat or Bride of Frankenstein cupcakes - but for today's purposes they are Maleficent!

And in the old story, Maleficent's all crazy nuts evil about not being invited to a Royal Christening.  Good thing she's not around today because she'd have to deal with all the other fairies FB photos showing all the stuff she wasn't invited to.  She would be all up in the comments "Now you shall really deal with me @PrincePhillip and all the powers of Hell!" She might actually do better in Westeros playing the Game of Thrones.  She's got the dragon and everything.  (Side bar: for GoT fans, did you see last episode "The Mountain and the Viper"?? Holy. Cow.  This show never disappoints.  Kudos HBO.)

Have an absolutely awesome week and if you saw the Maleficent movie, then let me know - thumbs up or down?!

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Disney Frozen Movie Cupcakes

Have you seen the new Disney movie Frozen? If not go see it, regardless if you have girls or boys, or no kids at all. It's based loosely Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen fairy tale but this is a really cute movie and actually a pretty good story line for girls.  It does have the absent parents that Disney works into a lot of the stories, but it's not your typical prince charming saves the distraught princess theme.  (Brave was also a really good one too!)

We saw it a couple weeks ago, and my kids got the soundtrack for Christmas, so it's been Frozen, Frozen and more Frozen over the past couple weeks.  I guess there could be worse things, at least we are past the Barney and Wiggles stage - those songs tend to be crazy earworms!  My little 6 year old girlie girl also asked for Frozen cupcakes.  So here they are with all of the Frozen main characters (well most of the characters, aside from the "people" because they are harder and take longer to do, and we needed these for a get together this past weekend).

Above are a Rock Troll and the super funny snowman, Olaf.  All Olaf wants to do is enjoy summer time, just don't tell him what happens to him in the summer (happy snowman of course)!  The Rock Troll is made from candy pebbles with the detail added with Wilton candy melt.  Olaf is made from 2 large marshmallows (head cut to size), mini marshmallows for the neck (snowmen have necks?!) and one cut in half for the feet, candy eyes, candy coated sunflower seed nose, and candy melt is used for the rest of the detail.

And below are Sven the reindeer (because reindeer are better than people!) and the icy snowman/body guard Marshmallow.  Sven is mostly candy melt with pretzel antlers, candy eyes, and an m 'n m nose.  Marshmallow is all candy melt and some blue sprinkles for his ice teeth/spikes!

And since I did want to represent the Frozen sisters Elsa and Anna, I did their colors in the frostings - light turquoise and white for Elsa and blue and magenta for Anna (pronounced "Ahhhhna - as corrected by my 6 year old a dozen times or so).  To get the 2 toned icing, I used this technique - where you add each color to a separate icing bag, then add both bags to a 3rd icing bag.  It worked great and was quick!

All the cupcakes are decorated with these fun edible snowflakes that I've been meaning to use forever which fit in perfectly with the Frozen theme! They have no real taste, its kinda like the edible easter grass made from starch.

We even did some fun snowflake pretzel snacks to go along with the cupcakes.  Pretzel snacks are my favorite go to party snack, since everyone seems to like sweet and salty - both kids and grown-ups alike.  They are just a square pretzel base with some chocolate or white chocolate drizzled on and while still wet add your favorite sprinkles. Very easy and portable too.

And you get a fun Frozen dessert platter!

And WOW -  the first post of 2014!!! Goodbye 2013 and hello 2014.  Aren't we supposed to have jetpacks and buttons to zap you anywhere you want to go by now? Come on scientists, you are a little behind the sci fi books and shows.  Well maybe 2014 is the year, at least we have Google glasses and 3D printers, although if you ask my kiddos I don't think that quite beats a jet pack or a flying car! Happy New Year to All!

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