If your taking your little ghosts and goblins around this weekend and need a last minute treat for a party, check out some of these fun ideas over at Prudent Baby. Prudent Baby is a fun website with lots of inspiring ideas and tutorials. I found the perfect way to ice a cake along with an amazing frosting recipe. Have a great weekend and a Happy Halloween!
Remember the treat I mentioned when we were putting together our Countdown to Thanksgiving Turkey? I thought I would share what we made. This recipe is always fun to make in the fall, they are delicious. I only make them once or twice a year though, as our good friend Cookie Monster would say they are a "sometimes food".
A coworker gave me this recipe a few years ago, it is originally from Nikki Evans of New Jersey.
Soft Ginger Snaps
4 C. flour
2 TSP ground cloves
1 TBSP baking soda
1 TSP salt
4 TSP ground ginger
4 TSP ground cinnamon
2/3 C butter
2/3 C shortening
2 C sugar
2 eggs
4 TBSP molasses
Mixture of cinnamon and sugar to roll cookies in
Combine (I sifted) flour, baking soda, cloves, salt, ginger, and cinnamon; set aside.
Beat together (I used my Kitchenaid Mixer) butter, shortening, and sugar until fluffy. Stir in eggs and molasses until well blended. Add flour mixture and beat until smooth.
Pinch off and round dough into balls and roll in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 8 to 10 minutes (I did 10, they were perfect). Don’t bake too long, they will be soft and looked undercooked, even when they are done.
This makes about 60 cookies, so I was very glad we had cousins over to share with and take some home. These would also be fun to take to neighbors, you don’t want them just sitting around the house or you will be tempted to eat them all!
I printed each family member their own thankful sheet for them to write down blessings. I did twenty five total (for the countdown) and the cut them into feather shapes. If you trust little hands, you can have them cut out their own, in my house Mom and Dad cut out most of them. Then we talked about what gratitude was and wrote down all of the things we are grateful for. Of course one of the things I am grateful for is food. :) After they were cut and filled out, we used glue sticks to attach the feathers to popsicle sticks.
We then let Daddy assemble our turkey while we made treats. We took the styrofoam balls outside on skewers to spray paint them, then left one of the skewers in and cut it in half. We used the skewer to attach the head and the body, you could also use a popsicle stick to do the same job. Then we flatted the bottom of the body ball by pressing it on the counter, so our turkey would sit up.
Daddy then poked the feathers into the body part of our turkey. As much fun as this part is to let the kids do, I wanted to reuse this guy next year, so we had Daddy do it.
For the turkey's face I had found this foam turkey kit for $1.99 at Micheal's. We used the face and attached it to the head of our turkey with hot glue.
We made some feet with pipe cleaner and our Countdown to Thanksgiving Turkey was complete! Starting November 1, after dinner each day we will pull out a feather and talk about the blessing that the member of our family wrote down. We will talk about why we are grateful for that blessing and what it means to be thankful.
Here is a view from the back, the feathers became to heavy for our turkey, so we ended up using an extra popsicle stick to prop him up, from the front you would never know.
Here is another front view of our turkey. I think he turned out really cute and I am excited to continue this tradition for years to come!