Best Ever Pumpkin Bread

Hello again,

I have failed to keep up with any holiday postings seeing as we were busy with the holidays...such is the way.  Well, who says we cannot enjoy pumpkin treats beyond the fall holiday season?!?!  Not me!  I love all things pumpkin and this bread is our absolute favorite pumpkin treat.  In all fairness this can be called a cake, but either way it is delicious!  I do not alter very much from the original recipe which can be found on the Taste of Home website here.  I usually cut one egg from the recipe and use 1 cup of canola oil and instant pudding can be substituted; other than that there are no alterations to this recipe as it is perfect.

This year we hosted Thanksgiving Dinner for our family and as a little gift to all of our guests we made mini loaves for them to take home.  Super easy gift to share with family and friends around the holidays.  The tags that I used were a fabulous free download that I found on Pinterest here.

Baking Times vary on what size pan you choose to use.  I usually opt to bake it in a bundt cake pan as it is so pretty and easier...only one pan needed.

Bundt cake pan  325 degrees for 80 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Mini loaf pans 325 degrees for 30 minutes

Hope your family enjoys this pumpkin treat as much as we do.  Thanks for stopping by. -Robyn

Our Favorite Homemade Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips

There are so many wonderful reasons to love fall...the crisp air, the changing colors, and my very favorite....baking!  Oh, how do I love to bake!  Homemade cookies, cakes, breads oh, my!  I have been making this Banana Bread recipe for over 10 years now, and still think it is the best!  Everytime I try another recipe I just wonder why, as if I am somehow cheating on my tried and true!

Banana Bread

3 overripe banana's
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/4 cup butter (1/2 stick)
Chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Mash bananas in a large bowl.  Add flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, and egg.

Melt butter and add it to the bowl, stir until just mixed.

Pour into a greased loaf pan.  Sprinkle on chocolate chips.  Bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Note:  I have made this with only 2 bananas if that is all I have in the house and it turns out just fine.

Adapted from Parenting Magazine

Hope you enjoy this yummy quick bread just as much as we do. -Robyn

Simple Fall Hostess Gift

With all of the fall get togethers that are sure to fill up your weekends, you may be looking for a simple, affordable hostess gift.  I love bringing a little something to say thank you, I love homemade, but from the store is equally wonderful.  While visiting the gift shop at a local farm I found the most adorable little baking gifts.  They have a wide variety of super cute baking mixes and other cute kitchen accessories.  I choose a scone baking mix with a couple of coffee packets.  Wrapped them up with a little cellophane and tied with a bow and added a glitter leaf.  Sweet little gift for anyone on your gift list.  This can be altered with any baking mix...even a cute seasonal quick bread mix from the grocery store...it is truly the thought that counts.

Thanks for visiting.  -Robyn

John Deere Farm Birthday Party

I cannot tell you how excited I am to share this party with all of you.  When my soon to be five year old stated that he would like a John Deere/farm party I thought...really?!?!?  No way to just run out to the party store and pick up the supplies.  Naturally I turned straight to Pinterest and was overwhelmed with all of the great ideas I found.  If you would like to see how obsessed I was just check out my Pinterest Board for yourself.  As usual I would have loved to have taken more pictures, but that just was not to be.  So sad that I did not take a picture of the Happy Birthday banner that I made...oh, well.  Naturally we choose green and yellow for our colors with some orange thrown in (the birthday boy's favorite color).  I had many games and crafts planned for the day, however I found that all the kids wanted to do was play in the backyard.  So much for all of my planning, but thrilled no one was bored!  The first activity that the kids did was to Plant A Garden, which was my favorite of the day.  I saved a bunch of tin cans and punched holes on the bottom with a nail and hammer, for drainage.  Then I got busy crafting with some cute burlap ribbon and my hot glue gun.  I printed out the John Deere logo from Google Images onto card stock and then cut them out and covered them in clear contact paper to try and protect them.  I cut small slits on the sides and threaded them with the green ribbon and again used the hot glue gun.  I have to say that I was quite pleased with the results.

We set up the wheelbarrow in the backyard with dirt and scoops (found these at Target) and some tomato plants from the local nursery.  We tried to grow our own from seeds as a fun project for the kids, but this just wasn't meant to be.

Then I had made paper pinwheels following these instructions which I had each child's name attached to.

We had a guess the seeds game set up which only a couple of the kids played, however I was amazed at how good they were at guessing the seeds correctly.  We also had a puppet craft and a clucking chicken craft.  The clucking chicken was a huge hit.  I had printed out a bunch of farm themed coloring sheets and had those set up with crayons and markers.  We also had a Feed the Pig game which was simply a cute little pig garbage pail I had found at Meijer and some bean bags we had.  Then there was a Tractor Races game which was just a board set up and some small John Deere tractors to race down the ramp.

We served lunch for the kids which included Pigs in a Blanket, also known as bagel dogs which we kept warm in the crock pot.  Popcorn, watermelon and corn on the cob was also on the menu.  

For dessert the kids enjoyed dirt cups.  I loved the carrots in the dirt which I had found here originally.

While the adults had carrot cake.  This carrot cake is one of our favorite recipes which I make every year for Easter, so I was happy to be able to pull it out again so soon.  You can find the recipe for this Carrot Cake at Taste of Home.  Just a note, I prefer mine more cake like and bake it in a 13"x9" baking dish and bake it for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

The party favors were very simple and included a homemade s'mores snack mix which we made from the Pepperidge Farm graham cracker fish, mini marshmallows and milk chocolate chips.  A homemade chocolate covered oreo with green and yellow drizzles.  My inspiration came from here. Of course we had to include a candy Cow Tale.  

This party was so much fun to plan and host.  Next time I guess I will just host a large playdate.  :)  As always, thanks for stopping by.  -Robyn

Oatmeal Applesauce Muffins

Good morning all,

While looking for a healthy, kid friendly snack for preschool I came across this fantastic muffin recipe on the Quaker Oats website.  I only made one change, and only to see if they would taste equally as good with whole wheat flour and I found that yes they do.  I switched out a 1/2 cup of All Purpose flour with a 1/2 cup of  Whole Wheat flour.  One more note, I used paper muffin liners and I found that the muffins stuck to the papers while warm, however once they were completely cooled this was not the case.  So completely up to you how you choose to prepare them.  Absolutely delicious and didn't feel guilty eating them.

Hope your family enjoys these muffins as much as our did.  Thanks for stopping by.

-Robyn

Easter Bunny Cookie Pizza Basket

It looks as if Spring may actually make it to the Midwest after all.  Which makes me realize Easter is right around the corner and I better get busy with Easter baskets for the family.  This year I decided to do joint family basket's with a cookie pizza theme for the cousins.  Each basket includes a sugar cookie mix, which is labeled Bunny Pizza Crust and a tub of white frosting, which is labeled Bunny Pizza Sauce.  Then we included the toppings; two tubs of sprinkles, little candy coated chocolate and jelly beans.  The candy coated chocolates and jelly beans are in little carrot and bunny "eggs" that I found at the dollar store (thought they were so cute).  The basket is finished off with homemade Peep Pops, Ring Pops, and a few other spring essentials...bubbles and chalk.  

Simple and fun gift basket idea.  Hope you enjoyed stopping by.

-Robyn

Cake Decorating Birthday Party

Choosing a theme for our daughter's twelfth birthday party was much easier than I had thought it might be.  I perused Pinterest for themes that she might like and let her choose from three.  She ultimately choose the cake decorating party, probably since this one scared me the most as I have almost zero experience with decorating cakes.  Well, as they say, no time like the present to learn something new.  I will admit that I was nervous to take on this party, but I am happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised.  

The girls were at a fabulous age for this party theme.

I choose to make each girl their own 5" round cake (they looked so darn cute).  I was very inspired by this blogger's cake decorating party.  I do not own small round cake pans, so I choose to bake 13"x9" cakes and use a round cookie cutter to cut out round cakes.  To make 12 cakes I had to bake 5 cake mixes, each 13"x9" cake yielded 5 cake rounds.  I used one cake on the bottom, and then cut one cake in half width wise and used a half cake for the top tier.  So each cake was 1 & 1/2 rounds.  

I had read that you can freeze cakes which makes them easier to frost.  I am sorry to say that this was not the case for me.  The cake still crumbled while we (my mother was so kind to come save me from the icing debacle that ensued) iced them.  While this did cause some panic, they still did turn out pretty cute.  So sorry that I do not have a picture of them frosted.

A friend was kind enough to share her recipe for cream cheese buttercream icing.  This was a fantastic icing which I will absolutely use again in the future.  I placed each cake on a Wilton 8" cardboard cake round that I found in the cake decorating aisle.  I iced the cake with white icing and then divided the rest in half.  One half was tinted light blue, which actually looked more like green (oh well) and the other half was pink.  I used the Wilton disposable icing bags with a decorator tip, there were a variety for the girls to experiment with.  I had seen a tip on Pinterest to use a  twist-tie to seal the tops which helped, but we still had many an icing explosion.  I would have loved to have been able to share photos of the decorating, but I was busy cleaning up icing and sadly was not able to snap any.  However, the girls were very talented, and the cakes looked amazing, much better than anything I could have created.  Every girl had a bakery box with their name on it to take their creation home to share with their family.  I created the labels in Word and just printed them out.  I thought that they needed a little finishing touch so I made some cupcake wrapper flowers to dress the boxes up a little.

After they were done decorating their cakes the girls voted on their favorites in three categories; Most Colorful, Best Design and Most Creative.  The winners were awarded a cupcake wrapper ribbon award. 

  As the girls were arriving to the party we played a Name that Cake game that I found on Etsy.  I altered them so that they were not for a bridal shower, but rather a birthday party.  Again, the girls amazed me at how many of these that they guessed correctly.  The winner took home a sock cupcake prize.

After the cake decorating the girls played Bingo for prizes. I photocopied Bingo cards and then used leftover scrapbook paper from the Happy Birthday Banner that I had made to make them party worthy.

The Bingo prizes were baking themed and were made with baking bowls and utensils from the dollar store and baking mixes from the grocery store.  The girls were very excited to win a prize...the brownie bowl was the favorite.  To ensure no hurt feelings once a Bingo was called they drew a number and all the prizes were numbered with corresponding numbers.  If someone happened to wind Bingo more than once they could keep their prize or trade it in for another prize.

This basket included a mixing bowl, measuring cups, cupcake liners, sprinkles and a chocolate cake mix.

These were the cookie mixes with measuring spoons and a cookie cutter.

This was the brownie basket which included a mixing bowl, spatula, cupcake liners, sprinkles and of course a box of brownie mix.

There were two of the bath poof cupcake prizes.  The bottom is a ramekin dish, and the bath poof is topped off with a lollipop.

These were the numbers for the drawing of the prizes.

I choose to keep the food simple since the party was after lunchtime.  We served little finger sandwiches that were either turkey & cheese or ham & cheese and were marked with little washi tape flags.

Then we served a veggie tray with ranch veggie dip and hummus and crackers & cheese.  Then of course we served cupcakes.

For drinks we had pink lemonade and chocolate milk...the pink lemonade was the big winner.

Here is a shot of our dining room with the tables all set up.

I made a Happy Birthday Banner using the free printables from this site.  I have used her site in the past and love how they turn out every time.

I also made these adorable tulle pom poms using this tutorial and absolutely love them.  They were perfect hanging from our dining room light fixture.  They are now hanging in my daughters room as they were just too cute to put away.

Since they had a lot to bring home I decided to make some cute bags to take everything home in.  I found these on Pinterest and thought they would be easy enough to whip up.  Well, yes they are easy, but took forever to do since I am such a master procrastinator.  In the end I am thrilled that I made them, but they did take the most amount of my time.

We made simple little party favors for each of her guests using a pack of gum and trendy little hairbands that I made using this tutorial.

After the party was over there were a couple of left over cakes for the boys to decorate which I was able to snap a few pictures of.  As you can see the cakes were frosted in white and the decorator bags with the blue/green and pink frosting.  They loved decorating the cakes just as much as the girls, truly this is a wonderful idea for any age group, just depends on how much mess you can handle.

Thanks for sticking with me this long, as I know this is a long post.  Hope you enjoyed reading along.  This was one of my favorite parties and so happy our daughter enjoyed every part of it.

Homemade Marshmallows

So I thought to celebrate our snow day this week that we could attempt to make homemade marshmallows.  I wasn't all that confident (I rarely am when using a candy thermometer), however I was pleasantly surprised.  They were super easy and really good.  I used the following recipe from Betty Crocker Easy Peppermint Marshmallows.  I only made a couple of changes.  I used Vanilla extract in place of the Peppermint extract and did not use the food coloring.  They were met with rave reviews. 

 

 

Enjoy with hot cocoa or all by themselves.  Such a great treat for our snow day.