Fragile Earth Stuffed Animals

WELCOME TO THE GRAVEYARD!

What better to make for our cooking project near Halloween than a graveyard? An edible graveyard no less! And what do you need to make this masterpiece? Chocolate pudding - we prefer the cooked variety in our household; milk, whipped cream, Oreo cookies, Milano cookies, candy corn, decorating gel, and little chocolate candies for eyes (more about that later.) We're going to take a quick break now while I run get milk, since I just noticed that this carton expired on the 9th ... of SEPTEMBER! Obviously, we're not big milk drinkers in this household. We get our vitamin D and calcium from other sources - like cheese & ice cream! Take three cups of milk (from the new carton, if you please) and dump it into a pot. Add the pudding powder and mix well. Heat the milk/pudding mixture over a medium high heat, stirring constantly, until it comes to a full boil. We're almost there - just a little bit longer! If you're doing the non-cook kind of pudding, just mix the milk & pudding together until it thickens, then put it in the fridge for a little bit to let it set. While the pudding is thickening, take the Oreos and put them in a food grinder. Chop those suckers up into tiny little crumbs. Don't worry about the cream filling - you want that mixed in. Hey you! Put down the Oreo! No licking of the frosting! What does that remind you of? Dirt, maybe? Well, let's just pretend it does, okay? Spread a layer of crumbs dirt over the pudding. Add the candy corn for embellishment's sake. There's no correlation between them and graveyards. I just like candy corn, okay! I try to use it in as many halloween recipes as possible. Don't judge me! The Milano cookies are your gravestones. Use the gel to write epitaphs on the grave markers. If you're spastic the way I am, limit it to initials or RIP. Stick the graves  into your pudding graveyard. *** IMPORTANT NOTE - DO NOT PUT COOKIES INTO PUDDING UNTIL JUST BEFORE YOU'RE READY TO SERVE IT, OTHERWISE THE COOKIES WILL GET MUSHY! VERY QUICKLY!!*** Final step - add whipped cream ghosts. I just used the can to add a little swirl of whipped cream and stuck two chocolate candies in for eyes. This would have been more impressive with the marshmallow Peep ghosts I originally planned on using. However, just so you know, looking for those marshmallow ghosts in the week before Halloween is like looking for the proverbial needle (in the haystack). It ain't happening, baby. So, I got creative. I didn't say I did it well, just that I got creative!

WITCH HAT COOKIES

Witches hats are a great treat to bring to a child's class party - fast, easy and the kids can make their own, if they prefer. Shall we make some?

You will need round, fudge covered cookies, chocolate kisses, decorating gel, and colored sugar.

Unwrap the kisses, unless of course, you want silver foil hats, put a little decorating gel on the bottom of the kiss, and attach the kiss to the cookie.

Sprinkle a little green colored sugar on the hat for embellishment and there you have sparkly witches hat ready for consumption.

MONSTER CUPCAKES

A fun and messy cooking activity for you and your kids.  They will love decorating the finished product!

Let's make some cupcakes, shall we? Not only are they going to be monster in size, we're going to decorate them with monsters. Since it's late and I've been working all day, I'm going to take a shortcut and make them from a box mix. There are times when shortcuts are very good things. This is one of them:)

Don't worry, not all of this is going into the cupcakes - some of it will be going on top of them:) We're going to make three different types of monsters, but first - the batter!

The box calls for three eggs, 1 1/4 cups of water, and 1/3 cup of oil. Since the only oil we have is extra virgin olive oil, we're going to class up these cupcakes and use butter instead. Besides, it's always better with butter! (Butter industry, please send my check to ....) Just stick the butter (in a bowl, please) into the microwave for about 1 minute - instant melted butter.

Dump the mix into a bowl,

add the water, then the melted butter, and the eggs, and mix them all together. Now, pour the batter into the cups.

If I had thought this through ahead of time, I would have mixed everything in a measuring cup - easy pourage. Did I mention it was late? I should also tell you that my brain shuts down at a certain point during the evening. We are so past that point right now!

Instead, I used a ladle. Scoop up the batter, dump it into the cups, and we're ready to go. The box says to fill the cups 2/3 of the way full - 2/3? HA! Did you not know we're making monster cupcakes? Fill them TO THE TOP! Now, into a 350 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes. I started checking after 20 minutes but since they were so big, my cupcakes needed the full 30 minutes.

Also, I put the cupcake tin on a cookie sheet, just in case my over-full tin exploded.

But no, they came out beautifully! They are way too pretty for Monster cupcakes. We need to change that!

First, ice them with chocolate icing. Another shortcut - icing from a cannister (Pillsbury, to be exact!) My poor mother is cringing right now and she doesn't even know why. Late ... blah, blah, blah ... shortcuts. And the icing is really good. I had to work really hard not to eat it directly from the can with a spoon!

That didn't stop me from getting it all over my hands, obviously. Anyway, on to the decorating portion of the show. Monsters take different forms for different people. In my household, spiders and bats rate pretty high on the "scream-meter" (that which elicits involuntary gasps/cries) so we're going to start with bats.

Take a round, fudge covered cookie and break it in half. These will be the wings. Stick them near the back of the cupcake.

Now take a Hershey Kiss and put it, point side forward, near the front of the cupcake. This is the head - add eyes (blood red, in my case) with decorating gel.

Right, one down! Moving on to spiders.

Start with chocolate twizzlers. Take two and cut them in half. Then cut the pieces in half again, but vertically this time. You should wind up with eight pieces that will be the legs.

Stick four on either side of the cupcake.

They're a little wobbly but that's okay. If the spider can't run very quickly, he can't catch you, can he?

The white blobs are his eyes. Typically, spiders have 6 or 8 eyes. I didn't want to make mine look too professional because I didn't want you to compare your final outcome to mine and be disappointed that it wasn't as perfect. I'm thinking of your self-esteem here. You're welcome!

Anywho, I also added a big old smile because spiders smile all the time. It's all about the accuracy here at the Fragile Earth kitchens! Okay, I think it's time to move on from this extremely scary spider! For our 3rd monster, I thought I'd go with a traditional Frankenstein type.

Start by pouring a little light corn syrup into a bowl and

coating the marshmallow completely. This way, the decorations will stick properly. (Wish I knew that back when I was making the chocolate bats - they might have come out a little better) But, let's stay with the here and now, shall we? This is going to be messy - best to have towels handy.

Sprinkle green sugar on one half of the marshmallow and black sugar on the other half. Colored sugar can be found in the baking aisle by the canned frosting!

Don't forget to add facial features to your monster. For me, it's a couple of milky eyes and a big old smile!

This is a fun way to spend some (messy) time with your kids. And we all know how the 6 & under set love the messiness!

Inspiration (I'm not even going to try to say I copied the recipes because my finished product looks NOTHING like their's) for the bat & spider cupcakes from allrecipes.com and for the Frankenstein cupcake from Taste of Home. As a matter of fact, they may not even want to be mentioned in this post. But I like to give credit where it's due!

CAT COOKIES

I've got some friends helping out in the kitchen tonight. Bad Kitty brought two friends to join in the fun. Thomas the Bashful JellyCat Kitten and Andrew the Medium Bunglie JellyCat Cat came to lend their expertise.

The bats got to make something - we want to make something too!

What can we make? They got to make bats, so can we make cats?

Well, let's see what we have in the cabinet. We've got some chocolate cookies, and some icing - we should be able to come up with something.

Let's take two cookies - put one on a plate. If you've got a colorful Halloween plate, all the better! This cookie is going to be the face of our cat. Then break or cut the second cookie in half.

Cut one of the halves into three pointy pieces. What do you think they look like?

Like triangles?

What part of a cat do they look like?

Triangle parts?

How 'bout we put two aside for the ears and you can eat the third piece. You don't want your cat to be a mutant with three ears, do you?

No ... well, maybe.  No, definitely not.

I didn't think so!

Squeeze a line of gel along the edge of the pointy piece. This is going to be the glue holding the parts together.  Smush it up against the top of your "cat head"  to make it stick.

Do the same thing with the 2nd pointy piece.

Now, using the white icing, add two dots for eyes.

And don't forget the whiskers.

Doesn't that look yummy? And aren't you getting a little close to the plate? And, WHO I wonder took a bite out of that cookie? Hmmm?

CHOCOLATE BATS

Because I love cooking and kids have fun playing around working in the kitchen, we're going to try to incorporate kid-friendly recipes on the blog each week. This week, we have a recipe that has the possibility of getting REALLY messy!  We're going to make some chocolate marshmallow bats, with cupcake liner wings.

First, grab some marshmallows, 1/4 cup butter, 1 square of Baker's chocolate, 1 chocolate licorice stick (ears), two cupcake liners (wings), toothpicks (to hold the marshmallow body together), and some small candies (eyes).

Put the butter and chocolate into a bowl (don't use a plastic bowl - take my word for it, it comes out VERY BADLY) and have an adult put it in the microwave for 1 minute.

Look, Bartie & Batty have shown up to "help". Really, they just want to eat the final product:)

While the butter & chocolate are melting, fold the cupcake liners in half.

Have your grownup take out the bowl - careful, it may be hot! Look, all the butter has melted perfectly. It doesn't look like the chocolate did much, but just wait! Once you take a spoon and start the mixing process, you'll see that it really is very soft and mixes easily.

Doesn't that look yummy? I could (and have) eaten it straight out of the bowl. Divine!

Pile the marshmallows on top of one another like blocks.

Really, is there anything prettier than chocolate drizzling down the creamy white marshmallows? Not tonight, there's not!

My mouth is watering already!

Take a knife and carefully cut two small pieces from the chocolate licorice stick. You can also just pinch a small piece off if you're feeling particularly pinchy. Just remember to keep it small - it has to fit on top of the marshmallows!

Put your chocolate licorice ears on top of your chocolate covered bats. Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate - my mind is singing a happy song!

Use two small candies for the eyes - you're going to have to hold onto the back of the bat and press hard to make sure they stick properly. Are you prepared to get chocolate all over your fingers? Because if you're not up to the task, just let me know and I'll come over and do it for you. I can't get enough of this stuff, and I'm not above licking my fingers in front of strangers. Okay, enough about my bad habits - back to the bats. Put a little bit of the chocolate on the cupcake liner wings to act as the glue. Press it into the back of the bat and hold for a second or two, to give it time to stick.

And voila! Bats so easy a child could make them! And mine look like a child did make them but I'm okay with that because, like a child, I ate all the evidence:)