What happens when you pair a health-conscious, vegan mother of two who has her own diet business with a husband and children who sometimes have other ideas? This blog is a chronicle of my journey to eat and live in a life-affirming way!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Bunnies, Chicks and Other Misadventures!

It looks like al is well in bunny-land but nothing could be further from the truth! When the class mom asked me to prepare "bite size snacks" for my 8 year olds Easter party I don't know what came over me to think that we would make bunny and chick pops?!? Me non-crafty, non-bakey me! I can cook with the best of them but baking cute cupcakes and making cakes for my children's birthdays has just never been my thing.

So, it all started off rather well. I was under no impression that these snacks would be "healthy" in the traditional sense of the word, but I sought out to make them as vegan and as healthy as I could! The recipe starts out with cake mix so I bought the Cherrybrook Kitchen mixes, which are dairy, egg and nut-free. I just love these mixes and use them whenever I do have treats to make for the kids.


So, here is the chocolate one freshly poured into the pan.


And, here are the cakes piping hot right out of the oven.



Once the cakes were cooled we dumped the pan into the bowl and proceeded to mix the along with the icicing (white cake with vanilla icing and chocolate cake with chocolate icing.) You are supposed to add the icing slowly and add as needed and we almost used an entire one with each.



Here my son is mashing the dough with his hands and mixing in the icing! They loved doing the "dirty work!"


Next we rolled the dough into balls for the chicks and triangular flat shapes and put it aside.

We were planning on making the chocolate ones into eggs so shaped them into egg shapes.
After they are rolled into balls you have to use your "candy coating" mixture, which is really just a white chocolate mixture, to attach them to the sticks. Basically you heat up the mixture, dip the stick in approximately an inch and then let them dry.

With the white dough, they worked perfectly.
Then, we began decorating. My son said that the bunnies didn't look like bunnies and we didn't space out the candy corn as we should on some of them. Oh, well.



By the way, the chicks ended up being more Easter Eggs because the yellow gel dye made the "candy mixture" into a clumpy mess! Oh, well.

Here Caroline is heating up chocolate on the stove (with my supervision, of course!)


And, here is the end result of the chocolate eggs. It looks more like a wounded battlefield than a joyous Easter treat! They literally melted off the sticks. So, we just made do and made Easter Eggs sitting in the basket with the bunny.
Overall a fun family adventure but I declared retreat and bought some extra Crumbs mini Easter cupcakes to fill in the gap! I just didn't have it in me to make another batch.

Have you ever tried something ambitious and out of your comfort zone and it just flopped?

Do craft things come easy to you or are you like me and are a total distaster with them?

Not to be too soppy but it truly was the family memories that counted for me!

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