Mother Nature's Best

Mother Nature's best - fresh fruit Skewers. Ripe. Sweet. Satisfying.

There is of course no recipe for this. But, this is a just a really simple and fun way of serving fruits. Especially for kids. I made this also as a part of lunch for the play date my daughter had with her 7 friends. Just serving the fruits on a skewer made it all colorful and appealing to the kids. And they loved it and ate it all up. I had to warn them to not poke the sticks up their throats though and to remove the fruit with their hands and then pop it in their mouths. And also not to poke others with their sticks! And not to have fights on the table with the sticks as swords. And not to..oh well...maybe next time I'll just put them in a bowl! No - actually it was fun!

You could also do this for a regular party with both adults and kids - Everyone loves fruits! You can also make them into the shape of a bouquet. Use a small watermelon to hold them together at the bottom.

Just a tip - if you have just a bunch of adult friends for a party - try to spice up the fruits with some salt and red chilli powder or chat masala and serve the same way. Pick your fruits accordingly.

Just pick your favorite fresh ripe fruits. I used Pineapples, Watemelon, Mango, Strawberries and green Grapes.

Cut them into small squares or any other shapes and move them to skewers. Try to keep the same order of fruits so when all the skewers are done - they look nice - maybe its just the over obsessed Virgo in me doing this!




Enjoy and Peace out!

Chocolate Cupcakes

Play dates gotto have cupcakes. What’s better than cupcakes? Nothing. Actually something.. Chocolate Cupcakes. With Frosting. With Sprinkles. With a cherry on top.

Perfect.

I usually don’t have the patience to do little cupcakes. I just take a trip to my closest grocery store and pick these things up. But, this time I was determined. Maybe just because I wanted to blog about it and I can’t really blog much about Albertsons cupcakes.

But, confession after baking these – these are addictive right out of the oven – naked. No frosting – no nothing. Just the cupcake. My husband does not even like chocolate but ended up eating maybe 3 of these right out of the oven. Maybe it’s just the fresh baked smell…hmm….divine. Or the fact that its late in the evening – and we just finished dinner and these make perfect deserts. Whatever the excuse is – these are addictive.
I had to keep my family away from these cupcakes so I can have at least one each for the kids coming for the play date. Instead I gave my family the frosting left on the bowl and they licked it up well. I even have pictures to prove it but will refrain from posting…unless you all want to be grossed out!

I took the recipe for these cupcakes from my favorite baking recipes site – verybestbaking.com. Here’s the link to the recipe – Rich Chocolate Cupcakes

And before we proceed, sorry for so many pictures below – I can’t resist myself – bitten by the cupcake bug.

Here's a picture of all required ingredients.

Mix all the dry ingredients together -

1 1/2 cups All purpose flour

2/3 cup baking cocoa

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

In another mixing bowl, add all these ingredients to beat together.

1 1/2 cups Sugar

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Beat it all up together until nice and fluffy.

Add about half of the dry mixture to the butter eggs mixture. Once again, beat together well till combined.

We need to alternate the dry mixture with a cup of milk. Pour in half a cup of milk and beat well. Then, add the remaining dry mix and beat well. Then again, add the remaining half cup of milk and beat well.

I lined my muffin pan with little paper-line muffin cups.

Scoop in about 3/4 each of the cups and bake in a 350F preheated oven. You can see them rising up a little bit. My daughter told me that these are donuts if you eat it at this stage. If you keep it a little more, then they become cupcakes. Hmm...

They are done when they pass the toothpick test!

Cool them on a rack for about 30 minutes before topping with frosting.

I made frosting from scratch one time and used so much butter it scared me. This time I just bought it from the store. The store one also probably has that much or even more butter or sugar but at least I don't see it directly and somehow that soothes me. I got the cream cheese based frosting - isn't cheese all protein? What ..not this one. Oh whatever.

I got just the plain vanilla frosting and also got the four color pack food colors. On the back of the package, it shows you how to get different colors by mixing the base color. So, after some serious thought, my daughter decided she wanted peach, coral and purple. So, we set out to do that!

I took about 2 -3 tsp of frosting in a bowl and mixed the colors in as needed.

Doesn't this just look nice. I added this picture just for the heck of it.

There's peach..or coral..wait I think this is peach. The other 'pinker' one is coral. ( 4 1/2 yr old terminology)

Apply the frosting on the top of the cupcake. For prettier cupcakes, you can use a piping tip and pipe them on - but I kind of just kept is sloppy - that's the look I was going for (yeah right!)

Here are the three colors all on top of the cupcakes.

Add some sprinkles on top - get your kids to do this - they love it - my daughter had a blast helping me with this!

Add a cherry on top and you are done!

Ooh..Purpulicious!

Miss. Peach.

Coral Baby Coral

I saved them in a chip and dip container.

The kids loved the cupcakes. Some did not like cherries - so my daughter ate theirs too. Some licked all the frosting and left out the cupcakes. Haha..Some finished the whole thing and wanted one more!

Perfect play date!

Peace out!

I'm sending this as an entry to the Cooking for Kids event hosted by Divya of Dil Se and also to Sharmi who originated the idea - Thanks Divya ans Sharmi for hosting!

Kids Butterfly Sandwiches

Today was my daughters' play date with her friends. 8 super excited kids. They had a ball.

I wanted to make like a simple and easy finger food kind of sandwiches. We were also having pizza for the kids.

I had planned to make star shaped sandwiches with my cookie cutter. But, I was at Target last week and they had these cute butterfly sandwich cutters for a dollar! Can you believe it - Sometimes God just wants me to shop at Target to make my life easier! Thank You God. Thank you Target. Perfect. I picked those up and decided that it would not be stars but butterflies. Besides, little girls just adore butterflies!


To make this quick sandwich, just get plain white bread. Apply a little bit of mayo on all the slices. Keep a cheese single on top of one of the bread and cover it with the other.

Use you cutter and cut them.

Perfect. Cute butterflies.
Assembly line.
Well..they look so plain. I wanted to spruce it up a bit. So, decided to make little eyes and antennas.

I had some corn - perfect for eyes. You can also use peas for green eyes. I chopped a tomato lengthwise and used them for the antennas and also a nice red smile.

There's my first butterfly.

Aren't these cute?

Beautiful Assembly line!

The kids loved these. It was more fun than food - so they just ate it fast!


Peace out!

I'm sending this as an entry to Cooking with Kids hosted by Divya of Dil Se

Three Striped Popsicles

My daughter's favorite ice cream - Popsicles. She just loves them

Tomorrow, I'm hosting a play date for my daughter with 7 of her school friends. That means eight 5 yr old girls at my house from morning till noon. Even attending job interviews are less nerve-wrecking! I have to make treats for the little girls and activities to keep them busy.

One of the things I had planned to do was these popsicles. Instead of just buying them from the store, I wanted a slightly healthier version - just make them with fresh fruits.

The easiest way to make popsicles is to just freeze the juice that comes in boxes. Easy. Pour. Freeze.

But, this time I wanted to just make it with fresh fruit. And thought I could make with three diff kinds of fruits.

So, I picked strawberries, mangoes and watermelon. It would be better if all the three were different colors - looks even more prettier - but with my daughter watching my every move - I cannot risk to put in anything else other than what she orders me to.



Add a whole bunch of strawberries into the blender. Add about 1/2 cup of sugar. I'm using a cup that has 50ml mark on it - that's a medium scoop of sugar. You can even make it without sugar. But, these were a little tart and hence I added some sugar.


Give it a Whirrrrrrrrrr...

Now, pour the juice into Popsicle molds and freeze for about an hour until the juice is firm.
I had just six molds and that was a big Popsicle emergency. 8 kids. 6 molds. Wrong formula.

Thanks to my neighbor Katie - I borrowed a couple of star popsicle molds from her.


Now, chop up some mangoes and repeat the same process as above.

Add about a scoop of sugar. If the mangoes are really sweet, cut down on the sugar.

More Whirrrrrrrr...

Now, get ready with the watermelon juice too.

After the strawberry juice is frozen, get the molds out and pour in the mango in the center.

If you have time, re freeze the molds till the mango is firm too and then add the watermelon.
It was late at night and I was tired - and I knew mango juice was heavier than watermelon juice - so I just poured one on top of the other. In some places, they mixed up - but what the hell - the kids won't even notice - they are going to be so busy just excited!


There - that's three juices on top of each other.

Cover the molds are freeze.

There - I don't need to explain this step - the tongue just says it all..


Peace Out!

I'm sending this as an entry to the Cooking for Kids even hosted by Divya of Dil Se. Thanks Divya for hosting.