Sunday, Father's day, was also my husband's birthday. Since he is so awesome, we had a family dinner, which Madalynn cooked! I made the cake. I am not a terrific cake decorator, but I do make a pretty delicious cake, with amazing frosting that everyone always wants to know the recipe for. I guess you call it a buttercream frosting, but there is no butter in the recipe. I don't really like butter in frosting. It always tastes too sweet and rich to me. Plus, I don't feel like it holds its shape well enough for decorating. So, I thought today I would share the frosting recipe that I grew up making in my family. It is super simple and I thought everyone made frosting this way, but apparently not because many people tell me that they don't like to go to the trouble of making frosting so they just buy it in the little containers at the store. Believe me when I tell you that this simple homemade frosting tastes so much better and it makes your cakes better as well. Start with 3 1/2 c. of powdered sugar, or 1 lb. I measure it right in my old handy-dandy Tupperware mix and measure bowl. Here is the butter replacement, Crisco. And, I only use Crisco, never the store brand or any other brand of shortening. This is one case when I do not vary on brands. Pie crusts come out better and the difference is noticeable in about every recipe I have tried if I vary from this brand. Now, when you hear the recipe, we say that it takes 3 heaping T. of Crisco. Well, the kind of Tablespoon we are talking about is like the one in the photo. It is a serving spoon. Next you can see the amount that you scoop onto the spoon. Drop them into the sugar in the bowl. Cut the shortening into the powdered sugar, then add milk. I suggest adding about 6 Tablespoons to get it to the right consistency. Don't forget to add about a teaspoon of vanilla for flavoring. I always add it last so that you don't get weirdly colored powdered sugar lumps in your frosting. You want to blend it until it is smooth, you can use a mixer, but I usually do it by hand with a knife. Does that sound funny? That is how we always did it, because then you can use that same knife to spread it on the cake! At this point you can add cocoa to make it chocolate, or colors for decorating, or just use the fluffy white goodness on it. I love a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting! Buttercream Frosting 1 lb. or 3 1/2 cups of confectioners sugar 3 heaping T. Crisco About 6 T. milk 1 tsp. vanilla Put the sugar in a mixing bowl. Cut in the Cjrisco until there are tiny lumps of frosting throughout. Add the milk and mix well until smooth. Finally, add the vanilla and beat in. Now you are ready to frost!
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ibotta.com/register My daughter, Alicia, told me about this app along time ago. I finally signed up on Friday and guess what? I already have over $25.00 ready to come back to me in rebates! It helps that they are offering a $10.00 sign on bonus, and if your friends join, you get $5.00. Then, you just shop like you regularly do and get rebates! I earned rebates for any loaf of bread, any gallon of milk, any California cheese, any orange juice, any dozen eggs, etc. Then, there are specific brands as well.
I didn't realize how many of my friends and family already use IBOTTA! Now, they are my teammates and when we all use it, we can earn even more reward! It is a win-win situation. No one is paying me to tell you about this, I am just so excited about how easy it is to use and fun. I use my tablet to scan the UPC codes and then take a photo of the receipt. The fun thing is that many of the items I purchased were also on sale, or I had coupons for them! Whoo HOO! So, go ahead and try it! It is free, you've got nothing to lose and some extra cash to gain! I am going to girl's camp this year! Our church holds girl's camp for teenage girl's in the summer where they learn all kinds of skills and life/spiritual lessons. It is always so much fun! I used to go when I was a girl and loved it. My daughters all went and they loved it, (except maybe one of them). Sometimes I get to go as a leader and this year I will be a cabin mom. If there is one thing that I do not love about camp, or camping, it is having gross hair. Now that I am older, my hair doesn't get greasy as quickly as it once did. For teenagers, that is a different story. So, when I saw this tee that says, "Camp Hair, Don't Care", I wished that I could truthfully say those words. The truth is, I always care if my hair is gross! As a cabin mom, I am always on the look-out for cute things to do for the girls in my cabin. Since our theme for camp for this year is BOOT CAMP, I decided to look for camouflage bandannas for the girls. (BOOT Camp stands for Build Our Own Testimonies.) I couldn't find what I wanted for the price I wanted, so I found some fabric and started sewing them myself. Then I found this post on pinterest and the idea bells went off in my head! I decided to make the girls camp hair goodie bags! The recipe on the link above was for a small amount, but it showed the ratio of ingredients I would need to make a larger quantity and I was able to make it all for pennies! These are the two main ingredients for the dry shampoo. The ratio is 1:1. There are two cups of baking soda in the box, so I measured out two cups of cornstarch and mixed them both together. Now, the cool thing is that you can color your shampoo for brunettes and redheads! So, for blondes, leave the mixture white. For brunettes, add some cocoa powder and for redheads, add paprika and/or turmeric. (I added both.) Then, add a few drops of essential oils for a nice scent. Of course, the chocolate already smells good. The redhead mixture smells a little bit funny with the paprika, so I added the turmeric to see if that would help. It didn't. So, I put in a little peppermint to mask it. That helped but, I might fool around with it a bit more. I put peppermint in the blond mixture. I am running low on oils, otherwise I would have tried lavender or something else. Here is what the mixtures look like. I might add more cocoa to the brunette for darker hair. Now! On to the packaging! I went to Dollar Tree to find containers to put the dry shampoo in. I have used containers like these in the past. They come in packs of 10 for $1.00! (As you can see, mine are already full with a salve that I make using essential oils.) Dollar Tree was all out of them. So, I looked around and I found these! They are cute little baby food containers with snap on lids. I also picked up round labels. I had a little difficulty using the labels. The package gives you link for a template, but I didn't find it very user friendly. I promise that I will learn how to make things available for you to copy and use if you want to. I just used computer clip art for the picture. This recipe made 10 containers or the dry shampoo. I am going to make another batch. I put an R, BR, or BL on the bottom of the label to mark what kind of mixture is in the containers. The little spoons came with the containers. I thought if you were making this recipe for yourself, they would be cute to use to scoop out the mixture or something. I will probably save them for my grandchildren. They are sitting on one of the bandannas I whipped up. These are cute patriotic gift bags I found in the Target One Spot. One place I like to go online to print cute tags, address labels, etc. is to the Avery website. It is so easy to use and they have a lot of free art to use. They didn't have a template to match the round labels I used, which were not Avery, but to make tags for my gift bags, I used an address label template and just printed it on card stock and then just cut it apart myself. Then I put the bandanna, dry shampoo, hair ties, bobby pins, whatever you want into the bag and stapled it together!
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Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
April 2024
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