Pool Inflatable Donut Treats

So I've been a little obsessed with all the trendy bird inflatables that are so popular right now.  I don't even know why (we don't even have a swimming pool - we just mooch off of our good friends) but I just love the way they look.  

I've seen some flamingo donuts that also look like the pool inflatables so wanted to try to recreate them and some others too. I got a bit carried away with my bird theme! 

Can you guess what they are?? And why ostriches and peacocks are in the water I'll never know!

Clockwise from center: Flamingo, Great Crane, Black Swan, Ostrich, Peacock, White Swan, and Canadian Goose

Start with some baked mini vanilla donuts

Glaze them with the colors of your birds (or whatever inflatable you love!)

I made the heads with some melted candy melts in various colors.  Trace them on some parchment paper and let harden. 

Attach them with some toothpicks and more melted candy and decorate the donuts like the birds.  I also attached them to some graham cracker bases to float them in "water" aka dark blue vanilla candy melts.

I thought they needed someone to ride them so gave some teddy grahams sunglasses and swimsuits!

And add a decorated bear to each of your pool float treats!

Super cute for a summer party or to say thank you for letting us use your pool over the summer!

Can you believe it's already mid-August?? 

I say this every single year but time moves even faster than the previous year.  Is that even possible? Well enjoy even the crappy parts of your day as you'll forget about it soon enough!  

Enjoy the edible pool floats and thanks for swinging by!

Pastel Candy Thanksgiving Turkeys in Donuts

Turkey day is coming up this week in the US so that means I attempted cute turkey treats - again!

I found the most fun candy corn this year - pastel fruit cremes!  I loved the colors and knew I needed to do some fun treats with them so scooped up a bag and promptly forgot about it.

But luckily my kiddo found them and asked to try them.  

If you don't like regular candy corn - then you might like these.  Very fruity - still sweet but not like traditional candy corn.  I also had some white Lindor chocolates that someone gave me which I thought I could use for the turkey bodies (and I love it when I don't have to go buy more stuff for an idea!)

The pastel colors are so pretty!

And since I needed them to sit on top of something - I went with donuts.  Baked sweet potato donuts with cranberry glaze, which I thought was perfect for Thanksgiving.  Recipe linked for the donuts and the cranberry glaze is just some cranberry jelly mixed with a little milk and powdered sugar until you get a nice glaze-y consistency.

The rest of the turkey is a skittle chocolate, dab of yellow melted candy melt for beak, red sprinkle for waddler, and black edible marker for eyes.  Candy corn feathers are attached with white melted chocolate.

The turkeys are perched in little donut nests.  Do turkeys sit in nests? Well maybe not but they do look pretty cute all nestled in!

Well are the turkeys cute? Can you make a cute turkey? 

Thanksgiving is my fav holiday because it has all my fav foods.  Turkey, gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie - all my comfort foods on one plate!  I will definitely be indulging this week! What's your favorite Turkey Day food? And let me know if you think this year's turkeys are cute!

Here are some of my past turkey attempts! Which is your fav??

Easy Candy Turkeys

Marshmallow Peeps Pilgrim Turkeys

Pilgrim and Turkey Cupcake Toppers

Candy Melt Candy Turkeys

No Bake Mini Cookie Pops

Marshmallow Candy Turkeys

Malt Ball Candy Turkey Toppers

Rainbow Frosted Mini Donuts - vegan, raw, natural colors & no refined sugars

Happy National Doughnut Day! 

Get out there and get your freebie OR make your own! 

And I know you're thinking - no sugar - what the what??!! That cannot be a real doughnut.  But these are definitely sweet - just no refined sugars and you can feel less guilty for eating a bunch.

AND my obsession with natural colorants continues as these have no artificial colors or flavors added.

The base is all raw (Don't think like raw meat, but not baked) made from dates, coconut, pumpkin seeds, and coconut oil.

And the donut "glaze" is made from cashews, coconut oil, and a little maple syrup for sweetness.

The colors come from some of my favs these days for naturally coloring sweets:

And sprinkle them with fun and good stuff like edible dried lavender, freeze dried strawberries, raspberries, or blueberries, unsweetened coconut, candied ginger, nuts, turmeric, hibiscus powders - pretty much whatever you have you can add on top.

I love a pretty frosted doughnut and these mini healthy versions are perfect for my night time sweet tooth! 

Healthy eating and exercising was my 2017 new years resolution - not a diet but a real change in lifestyle and eating habits.  I still indulge and enjoy myself just in moderation - especially as I try to set an example for my 3 kiddos.  It seems today more than ever every one of us has to be accountable for their own actions and set an example for the next generations - you can't assume leaders or other role models will make the right choices.  

Thank you for swinging by and do something nice for someone today!

Rainbow Frosted Mini Raw Doughnuts

by Michelle Clausen June 2 - 2017

Ingredients and Instructions:

Doughnuts

1 cup mejool dates
1/4 flaked unsweetened coconut
1/8 cup raw pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
2 teaspoons of coconut oil 

1. Add ingredients to food processor and pulse until all is chopped into very small pieces and pasty.
2. Scoop about 2 tablespoonfuls and add to mini donut pan (or shape into mini donuts)
3. Refrigerate 15 minutes then remove from pan.

Frosting

2 cups raw cashews (soak over night in water)

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon of coconut oil (melted)

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1. Add cashews to high speed blender and blend until mixture is thick and creamy and no large pieces (you may need to use a spatula to move cashews around until all are blended well).
2. Add remaining ingredients and blend until mixture resembles icing.   
3. Add mixture to smaller bowls and tint with natural colorants (about 1 teaspoon of powder for each cup of frosting - or more depending on how dark you want the color - the color does darken a bit as they set) like carrot powder, turmeric powder, freeze dried raspberry, freeze dried blueberry, matcha, hibiscus powder, blue spirulina powder, or beet powder.  
4. Sprinkle frosted "donuts" with edible dried lavender, freeze dried strawberries, raspberries, or blueberries, unsweetened coconut, candied ginger, nuts, turmeric, hibiscus powders.

Prep time: 60 minutes Yield: about 20-24 doughnuts.  Stores 1-2 days at room temperature (or 2 weeks refrigerated - you can also freeze them to last longer)

If you want some regular donut recipes and treats - you may also like these!

Watermelon Doughnuts

Churro Doughnuts

Beer Doughnuts

Donuts and Cupcakes

"Cronuts"

Baked Wheat Donuts

Churro Doughnuts - Happy Cinco de Mayo!

So after failing terribly at making choux pastry, I decided to try another dough.  

Churros for Cinco de Mayo

And then I made them into doughnuts.  Yep, Churro Doughnuts! 

And they were pretty awesome.  Some were coated in the traditional cinnamon sugar but some were also dipped in vanilla and chocolate glaze with added sprinkles.  Of course sprinkles!

Pipe the dough into a line then shape into a circle before adding to the oil.  PS the dough is super hard to pipe because it's pretty dense.  I broke though 2 plastic piping bags trying to pipe one batch!  Pipe the dough while still warm, that may make it a little easier.  I let mine cool before piping it.

I don't normally fry stuff so this is new territory for me.  It takes only a couple minutes.  Flip once while frying until the churros are nice and golden in color.

When done let drain and cool on a paper towel.

Then dip!

I always thought churros were crispy all the way through.  THEY ARE NOT! Crispy on the outside and moist and soft on the inside.  So delish.  Traditional churros are coated in cinnamon sugar.  These were hands down rated #1 by everyone who taste tested them.

But the glazed were a very close runner up.  Not to mention they look so pretty!  Can food be pretty? I think so.

These churro donuts tasted a bit like a cruller but with a crispier outer shell.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! We are off to Orlando for a long weekend.  You may see posts of us enjoying a butterbeer or 2 from WWOHP!

Churro recipe can be found here.

For the vanilla glaze:
1 cup of powdered sugar mixed with 1 teaspoonful of water

For chocolate glaze:
1 cup of powdered sugar mixed with 1 tablespoonful of chocolate syrup 

Oktoberfest Beer Donuts

So I'm putting a pause on all the Halloween stuff for a bit.  I made beer donuts to celebrate the Oktoberfest season! I don't really need a season to put booze into stuff.  I kinda like to experiment with sweets that way.  I've tried beer jello, beer cupcakes, beer blondies, and now beer donuts.  

Is it Donuts or Doughnuts??

There is beer in the donut batter and beer in the glaze.  You can probably use any beer you like for this (please don't use Bud Light!).  My hubby has quite the obsession with craft beers, so at any time we have a few 6 packs in a variety of beer styles squirreled away.  I used Ballast Point's Sculpin which is an India Pale Ale.  Side note: Did you know a sculpin is a fish with teeth and venomous spines? It also is the only fish that produces adrenaline? I learned that from beer, go figure.

I found the recipe over at Foodista which sounded relatively foolproof.  Once you get all the ingredients mixed up, add the beer to the doughnut batter, which makes it nice and foamy!

Oh and these are baked not fried, so let's pretend they are way healthier for you.  

Baked up and right out of the oven, they are super tasty.  There is a subtle beer flavor too, but since many beers these days are flavored with orange, lemon or other spices - it totally works in baked goods.  This recipe also has fresh nutmeg (my fav!) and cinnamon so it really is a nice Oktoberfesty treat.

The original recipe just rolled the doughnuts in powdered sugar BUT if that's not enough beer flav for you, go ahead and some to a glaze.  

Beer Glaze:

6 Tablespoons of your beer of choice

About 1 and 1/2 cups of powdered sugar

Mix well.  Add more sugar or beer to get the dipping consistency you like.

And who doesn't like a donut with some glaze and sprinkles?  So of course I added some to these (totally optional if you don't but that's just kinda weird :)

Eat one and watch the latest Simpson's Treehouse of Horrors! That would be a total win-win.  

Enjoy and have a great rest of your week!

Tidy Mom's I'm Loving It

Works for Me Wednesday

Made by You Monday

Carolyn's Homework Today's Assignment Be Inspired

Time to Sparkle Tuesday
Two-Cup Tuesday

Cast Party Wednesday

Share Awesomeness Thursdays

Tatertots and Jello - Weekend Wrap Up Party

More the Merrier-DIY Home Sweet Home

Happy Hour - Freestyle Friday

Kitchen Fun and Crafty Friday