Easy Pink Dough Valentines for Preschoolers

An easy way for toddlers and preschoolers to celebrate Valentine’s Day!  Pink dough to play with!  Mix up a quick batch of pink colored dough and break out the heart cookie cutters!  The recipe I used is at the end of the post.  Here’s my nostalgic look back at my babies busy at work on their “Valentines”We’re going to make something!Squish that pinkness!The idea was to get them to make a Valentine on the table, then I would photograph it as their “valentines” for Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa.And that’s what we did.It was a lot of very pink fun!  I had to play a bit, too….Here’s the recipe I use for play dough:

2 and 1/2 cups of white all purpose flour   (I’ve tried it with whole wheat flour, and let’s just say…No!)

1 cup of salt  (fine, not coarse)

2 small packages of Kool Aid  (the ones without real sugar)  this is optional. if you don’t have Kool Aid, then add food coloring

3 tsp. vegetable oil  (canola oil is good)

2 cups of boiling water

Mix all the dry ingredients together, then add the boiling water.  Stir it all together very well and turn out onto a surface where you can knead it a bit.  It will be hot, so let it cool a bit before kneading.  Then knead away until it becomes smooth.  When it’s cool enough, the kids can start playing.  As soon as it’s cool enough, either play with it or seal it in plastic bags so it doesn’t start drying out.  This will last for quite awhile in a sealed bag.   Note:  the Kool Aid is just for easy color and aroma!  We used cherry for Valentine’s day.  If the kids love the smell so much that they taste it, it won’t hurt them at all, just a little salty.  If there’s worry about the flour, then I’d say don’t add the Kool Aid and then it won’t smell appetizing enough for little ones to put into their mouths!

Fun for the kids to make, and the photos are easy to send to everyone online, no mess, no snail mail! 😉  Just digital cuteness from the kids!  Happy ❤ weekend!

3D Cookies for Valentine’s Day

How do you say Happy Valentine’s Day to those you love?  Flowers, candy, cards, or some even bigger display?  Or do you prefer to do something special together?  Or is it one of those days that just slips by?  I saw a funny “quote” the other day.  It was a photo from Star Wars and the caption was “I’ll be celebrating Valentine’s Day Han’s style….Solo!”  Maybe that’s more you 🙂

We don’t make a super big hoohaw about Valentine’s Day, a few special things, like maybe chocolate or sometimes flowers.  I’m usually in favor of homemade or home-printed Valentines.  (OK, I admit sometimes I put way too much work into the “homemade” Valentines that the kids take to school.  But this year, I put in 10 minutes of work on a printable, and then they are on their own, I’m just too tired,with a been there, done that  kind of feeling).  Anwyays, I came up with a brilliant idea that I think will make a memorable Valentine’s Day for us this year:  The kids are in charge of making and serving supper for my husband and I.  Sounds a tad dangerous, but I intend to enjoy it!  We’ll see how it goes…

After having said that, I admit I did make a few Valentine’s cookies.  I had the dough in the fridge and a few more M&Ms from the last couple of posts! 🙂  And I had these cute letter cookie cutters to try out!  (A fun gift from a friend)  So here goes a little tutorial for some fairly easy, but attention-getting cookies.

Ingredients:  chocolate cookie dough and candy melts (I use Wilton brand) and letter cookie cutters (or just freehand it) and small heart cutters.Amor= love in Spanish 😉  Galletas=Cookies!   Cut out letters and a bunch of small or medium hearts for bases.Bake and let cool…..cool!Melt up some red and white candy melts and get ready to pipe them out of baggies with only a tiny corner snipped off…Squeeze strings of candy melt out while moving back and forth over all the letters.  Repeat with next color.Then pick up each letter and break off the extra bits of candy melt off the sides, this is really easy and works well.Line up the letters and the bases, some letters need two hearts for their bases.Use some more candy melt to attach the bases, I used dark cocoa candy melts (only took 3 melts)Holding the letters in place for about 5 seconds was mostly enough to balance the letters, but if necessary, prop them up for a bit…The candy melts set up quite quickly.  Here’s the bird’s eye view:And there you go!  The letters are quite sturdy and just so fun looking!  Great for a Valentine’s Day centerpiece.Oh wait!  Since you have the cookie dough out, and maybe a few extra cookies baked, go ahead and decorate some more for your centerpiece.  Here’s how I did it with Nutella and M&Ms using the same idea from the other day’s post: The kids wanted to cut out some Os and Xs for hugs and kisses, so I used up the last of the red M&Ms on these:And here’s one for you from me (sorry it’s not edible but I’m all about digital stuff)

I’d love to hear from you if you try out some of my little cookie techniques! 🙂

Easy Lego Cookies for a Lego themed party

Since I had a big bag of mini M&Ms sitting around my kitchen, I decided to try out some more cookies.  Colorful M&Ms always remind me of Lego bricks….and it’s no coincidence that I’m thinking about Lego right about now, when The Lego Movie just came out in theaters..still haven’t seen it, but it’s on my wish list…So while I wait to see it, I made some easy Lego brick cookies.  And yes, photos in this post may possibly resemble photos in my last post.  I’m ok with that.The only ingredients you need for these easy cookies are:  cookies, mini M&Ms and candy melts (or possibly icing and maybe some Nutella, depends how far you want to go with this).Roll out your cookie dough and straighten off the edges, then cut into small rectangles.  I used this chocolate cookie dough recipe, but you can use your favorite dough. You might want to lay out 2 rows of 3 M&M candies to see exactly what size you want your rectangles.   If you really wanted to go crazy with these cookies, you could use a vanilla recipe, then add food coloring to the dough so that the actual cookie would be the color of the lego brick! cool! But too much work for today.

So after you bake up the little rectangle cookies (about 7 minutes), when they have cooled you just ice them and stick M&Ms on them.  Easy!  I tried to melt all my different colors of candy melts in just a few baggies, so that I could pipe the melts onto the cookies.  Well, that didn’t work out for me….They melted right through the bags and glooped all over the plate.  In the end I just scraped up the goopy candy melts and spread them onto the cookies.  For a brown Lego brick, I used Nutella instead of candy melt, yum!Just add the M&Ms before the candy melts set up.   That’s all.  Really.  That’s it.  Now to eat them!disclaimer:  this is only easy if you have M&Ms and candy melts.  If you have to go out and buy everything, then it’s not so easy.  BUT if you were having a Lego themed party, and even only wanted to make, let’s say, red and yellow bricks, then you’d only have to buy 2 colors of candy melts.  Or if you only wanted brown Lego bricks, then you only need Nutella.  But then you’d still have to get lots of M&Ms….anyway.  It does happen to be a win-win situation though, since both M&Ms and candy melts (oh, and Nutella) will keep for quite awhile and you can bring them out for your next special baking event.  And make some slightly different looking cookies…..maybe like these ones….