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

baked donuts with sprinkles....!

....so i missed donut day on june 3rd...but had i realized it i would have broken out the donut pans i just got to celebrate...well better late than never and these are actually baked donuts which i've been meaning to try for ages.....i found a whole wheat recipe here @ sweet basil kitchen....and they are made with these....

...this is the first time i've used agave as the sweetener so i was really interested in how they would turn out....and i pretend they are a bit healthier for you (especially since i gave them to the kiddos for breakfast today...hey what can i say....aren't pancakes with a boatload of syrup just as bad for breakfast??)....

...i found the donut pans (mini and regular sized) at crate and barrel last week and for 10 bucks each which seemed like a bargain....

....i followed the recipe on the blog above but the batter was a little hard to get into the pans so after spending way too much time on the first 5 mini's....decided to go with a ziplock bag to pipe the rest in....this sped up the process like 10 times and it gave a better donut "shape" too....

.....bake @ 425 F for only about 5 minutes or so (or until the donuts spring back when you touch them....the donuts came out super easy (although i did spray the pans with pam before filling...)

....made some quick glazes to dip them in...vanilla (3/4 cup of confectioner's sugar, 1 tablespoon of milk, and 1 teaspoon of vanilla), strawberry (about 2 tablespoons of strawberry jam mixed with about 2 tablespoons of the vanilla glaze), and chocolate (1/2 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 1 tablespoon of the agave syrup---nuked in the microwave for about 25 seconds or until just melty)....

.....once you dip them, immediately add your favorite topping....i went with sprinkles.....

....and you get a bunch of pretty baked donuts topped with a bunch of crunchy goodness...and again since they are made with whole wheat pastry flour and agave syrup as the sweetener and baked versus deep fried...i hope they are a little better for you than the krispy kremes out there....or i pretend they are anyway...!

....i was a little worried about the kiddos enjoying them...but they totally gave them a thumbs up...i think the chocolate and sprinkles didn't hurt either....these are more cake-y than your normal fried yeast donut and the glaze is definitely a must....but very yummy and i would definitely make these again....i thought the red, white and blue sprinkle mix would be perfect for a 4th of july party too...!

....hope you have a great week and thanks for stopping by!...sharing at these awesome bloghops...

tidy mom works for me wednesday

thomas the tank engine and friends cake...!

....so this is the other cake made for the same weekend party as the brobee cake for my other 4 year old....he was super into thomas the tank engine until about a month before the party and then he became obsessed with these lego hero factory guys....

...have i pointed out before how smart those lego people are...?....not only do they have my 6 year old hooked on all the regular lego sets (he scans the catalog for hours dreaming of the next set he *has* to have or just looking at the sets and directions over and over again)....but they have these hero factory dudes (which started as bionacles but i guess hero factory sounds much better and they can sell more that way)....AND they upgrade them....meaning they make the same guys...change their gear slightly....and call them the 2.0 upgrades....meaning my guys have to have all the same hero guys AGAIN....but they need the *upgrades*......and guess what's coming out this summer....3.0 upgrades....!...are you kidding me??....like i said smart marketing machines over at lego....i'm definitely in the wrong business.....but i totally digress.....

....all the trains are made from royal icing (although i use candy melt a ton, these images needed more finer detail than you can get with the candy melt)....but i used the same technique...took some of our coloring book pages and reduced the images to the size needed for the cake....and then prepped all the royal icing and tinted the colors needed for the trains and details....then traced the images onto parchment with the royal icing....you can get some awesome tutorials on royal icing and how to pipe, flood etc on other sites like at Bake at 350....so i'll spare you those details...but for me i did these way ahead of time and let them dry just covered in parchment for like a couple weeks before i needed them which really saved time when assembling the cake (especially since i did 2 cakes in one night)....oh and because i didn't pipe onto cookies or fondant and only on parchment...i made sure the images were thick and not too fragile once dry (so they could be picked up and handled relatively easy)....some of that was done by layering on the royal icing....(unfortunately i did not get pics of this process---yeah i know some kind of blogger i am right??)....anywhoo this process is pretty easy but it is a little time consuming, so open a bottle of wine and try it out....!

...the cake is made with a square pan with 3 layers (each cut in half) and everything crumb coated....i don't think i ever had to make grey icing on purpose before (has happened by accident on occasion!)....so for this particular shade...i mixed some black royal icing with white buttercream...but that turned it a nice shade of purple....so google said to just keep adding some of each of the primary colors until you get the grey color you want....and it totally worked!....

.....the tunnel detail is made with a combo of yogurt covered raisins and hershey's cookies 'n' creme drops (which btw are delectable even if they do look like small rocks..)...the background to the tunnel is just store bought chocolate fudge frosting...once that was on and still wet....i put the trains on and pushed them in slightly (just be careful not to push too hard to crack the image)....

.....and finished up with some green "grass" around the edges...and you have a thomas and friends with grey buttercream cake...!...oh and his fav is james so he's on top...and the other trains are thomas, percy, henry, and hiro....he originally wanted them all to be *cross* but unfortunately i couldn't find pics of them that way....(personally i think that would have been a much better cake since these trains are always *cross* in the stories...

.....and this was all the reaction i needed...!

.....i have a feeling this is it for the "little kid" type of cake requests....i think the almost 7 year old is leaning towards another star wars guy for his birthday this august...but i'm still trying to talk him into a pencil cake...!

....happy june to all and thanks for stopping by....!

tidy mom