Toddler Recipe: Chocolate Octopi

Chocolate Octopi
Another great day of baking...

Found this recipe in the Usborne book What Shall I Cook?.  It's pretty simple, and depending upon what kind of shortening you use (I used softened butter instead of margarine), and how thoroughly you melt or soften, you don't actually have to refrigerate/freeze the dough.

The recipe yields about 10 octopi.  With a bit of help from little hands we mixed the ingredients for the dough (butter, sugar, flour, cocoa powder, and an egg).  Then we wrapped up the dough in plastic wrap, put it in the refrigerator while I cleaned up the measuring cups, bowls, and spoons.

After the clean up, I took the dough out of the refrigerator and divided the dough into two portions, one for myself (and my youngest, Nols), and the other for W.  I divided my dough into five balls of dough.  And I showed W the size of the dough balls and set W to work.  It was a good size guideline for her to follow, in shaping the dough.

For Noli's octopi, I did the majority of the dough dividing and shaping of the body and legs before she finally took interest and jumped in to use the butter knife to add texture to the octopi.  I let her do a bit of "texturing" then I quickly escorted the octopi into the oven before then were sliced to calamari.  And of course the decorating went off without a hitch.  We used some leftover icing I had to stick on Skittles for eyes and other candy features.  Both girls enjoyed taking turns in measuring stuff for the dough making, W enjoyed actually shaping the dough, and both girls enjoyed the decorating, I deemed it a success.  I only wish that I had the time and energy to do a talk about the Octopus environment, and life cycle.  I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow...

Dividing and shaping the dough balls.




























Flattening the dough balls into ovals.





























Slicing up the legs.   

 

Into the oven.






















Decorating with candy eyes (Skittles by request) and icing (or peanutbutter), for glue.






















One finished octopus...





























Our Consortium (official term for group of octopi) of  Choco-Octopi.

Toddler Recipe: Chocolate Covered Banana Slices

It was a good day for making treats.  I found this idea on www.yumsugar.com, chocolate covered bananas rolled in stuff.  It turned out to be a great activity and the end-product was a hit as well.

I sliced up three bananas. 
I had on had four bags of "stuff" for rolling the chocolate dipped slices in:

• lady fingers
• malt balls
• fruity O's
• cashew nuts

Then, "Hammer-time!" I had the girls take turns smashing up the "stuff" with a mallet, or rather the smooth-non-spikey side of a meat tenderizing mallet. (What toddler recipe could be complete without a mallet? Really?) And then I poured the crushed contents into four deep containers.

I melted a cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips with a tablespoon of oil to make the chocolate dip.  Once the dip had cooled down enough, I let the girls have at the chocolate dip and rolling ingredients.  Chilled the slices in the freezer for an hour and voila!



Dip, dip, dip...























Rolling, rolling, rolling...  

Maybe some eating too....





















Final product!

Spring Daze: Of Wheels and Water

Lazy Weekend! 

 












We took advantage of the warm weather and brought W's balance-bike with us to the local sledding hill.  She had a blast rolling down the hill again and again.


 













Took a swing around on a vintage kiddie ride.














Fed some baby ducklings. 
 

 And three days late, we bought W her very first pedal bike - and voila!  W pretty much figured out pedaling for herself!  One childhood milestone down - yay!

Here's a blast from two year's passed.  We've had W riding the Strider balance-bike for about two years now.  We had her pushing the bike and when she was finally showing signs of coasting for longer and longer distances, we started looking into pedal bikes.  The main catch was W's diminutive size - hardly any of the toddler bicycles had a small enough frame and short enough crank to fit her geometry needs.

We had actually bought her another pedal bike about a month earlier.  It was a Mantis Maya with 12" wheels.  But we found that W was on her very tippy toes even with the seat at the lowest setting.  In addition, when the seat was at the low setting, the crank was so long that her foot had to be above the height of the seat at the top of the pedal stroke.  Of course that made for a very awkward set up for someone learning how to ride a bike for the first time.

We decided to look yet again for another bike - and ran across okay reviews for a smaller bike, that took 10" wheels.  A huffy 10" girls bike, we found the best price for it at Toys R Us.

Biology: First Flight of our Painted Ladies

Last Thursday, we released our newly minted butterflies into the big wide world!














The moment that we've all be waiting for...















On the down side, two of the four butterflies failed to take flight: the permanently crumpled one rested in the grass along side the butterfly whose wing had a crippling twist.  We left these two in the grass to whatever fate awaited them, as they were creatures if the wild.  We told the girls that the two butterflies would prefer the sunshine and soft grass over confines of a cage, but that they most likely destined to become Robin food within the hour...
 













The other two butterflies, once released, flew up immediately out of sight and our hopes for them soared as well. 

Art Skills: Drawing from a book

Got W a new how to Usbourne book:  What Shall I Draw?  And W took to it immediately - and drew herself a lovely little piggie!















Here's the piggie in detail...