I was supposed to have two days off from work this week, but I ended up only getting one, and I wanted to try to spend a hot second with the kids before they go back to school on Monday, since I don't know when I will be getting another day off from work. It was 100 degrees out today, so I figured I should go ahead and do something that requires the oven being on all day! (See, who said I wasn't smart....) I had a few ideas in my head, and all of this crap to help me out....
I had a thought that I wanted to try making cake pops, to see what all of the rage was about, but I couldn't find any sticks when I did my shopping, so I figured that balls would be the same thing, with less work... glad I went with the balls! (Really, what self-respecting girl wouldn't?) And it was great listening to the kids talk about their balls all day.
I had Grant mix up the chocolate cake mix, Brett mixed up the vanilla cake mix (with a smidge of blue food coloring for pizzazz). And, since the oven was on anyway, I had Pasha mix up a brownie batter. Killing all sorts of birds with our stones.
Baked these bitches all at the same time! If you are a mother of three, then you damn well better be able to do three things at once!
Riffing off of the peanut butter cup cookies made in mini muffin tins, I decided to buy a tub of chocolate chip cookie dough to see if I could pull off sort of the same thing with Kisses. I bought the dough to save myself 5 minutes- ultimately hoping it might taste better? I dunno.
I told Pasha and Brett that they had to work fast (and, of course, I had them pre-unwrap the Kisses).
Surprise, of all surprises... It was a cookie fail! I put the cookies in the oven longer than I thought I should have, but the dough still seemed pretty raw, even after freezing the cookies to get them out of the pans in one piece.
I always have to make a huge ass batch of my NUM NUM cookies. Makes about 10 dozen, so they last me almost a week. (No, seriously, I think these are so good, I can easily eat a dozen a day, for all meals.) Oatmeal, toffee chips, peanut butter chips, and M&Ms.
Can't believe they survived the trip off of the baking sheet. They started disappearing soon after.
I don't usually fancy up my brownies, usually eat them plain (not even a nut). But I decided to try making a frosting, I bought a can of sweetened condensed milk and a can of cocoa, hoping there was a recipe out there for frosting using those two things. I couldn't find one, and I didn't want to make it on the stovetop either. So, I just mixed my sweetened condensed milk with a bunch of cocoa until it tasted chocolatey enough. Then I decided to add some powdered coffee creamer in to thicken it up.
It started out looking good enough, then when I tried to cut it, it all went to hell.
Put it in the freezer for a bit to try to make the cutting easier, then just decided to dress that shit up with M&Ms... why not, since we have the freakin' party size bag!
Had to cool the cakes before making our balls. The kids weren't too interested in the "heavy lifting" part of stirring in the frosting.
After more cooling in the freezer, and heating up a bunch of small batches of coating in the microwave to facilitate all of the dipping- we finally have finished balls! Pasha and Brett were both patient enough to put sprinkles on their balls while I rolled them in the chocolate.
A bunch of balls, a couple kinds of cookies, some fail brownies... and even ANGRY BIRD cookies that I made for the kids and had them "paint" at the end of the day.
Then the rains came! The heavens opened up there for a few minutes so I let the kids run around outside and get dirty while it rained. They rarely go outside during the summer time because it is just too damn hot around here. Thought for sure we would have a rainbow, but we couldn't find one.
Then I made dinner! The kitchen was already hot, so why not, right?
