Topic-Changing Thursdays: The Chiplet is 7 Months Old!

Here we are with another month past already! Last month I shared that the Chiplet had made a bunch of progress. Well, it keeps coming!

Carrot Cake version 2

I have made carrot cake before, but not since I lived in Maryland. It has been that long! I have made a version of carrot cake muffins so that I was able to send some to my dad (cream cheese frosting wouldn’t ship very well) but not the actual cake. My dad had requested it for one of the possible treats I could make him when we visited this spring. I am not positive which recipe I made the first time for him. But this time I pulled from my favorite cake book: Layered. I took pictures with my phone of the recipe to do my best version there. I knew it couldn’t be identical since I wasn’t going to bring cake pans and all this time.

Sooooo…

Fudgelet Adventures (part 18): Oil and Water Lava Lamp (and more)

Here is are fun simple activities for when you need a little quiet time. Not quiet time to yourself…I can’t help you with that, but quiet time with a 3 year old. Now, my almost 4 year old is finally calming down again. He was a great young 3 year old, and then a very emotional and cranky 3.5 year old. 3.75 years-4 years is feeling better again. Which is also nice since the baby is more on the move now and I need to focus on him even more than before. Anyway, I got the idea to make some more calming jars and they really do seem to help the Fudgelet when he needs some down time. Making them is also part of the fun.

Herbed Yorkshire Pudding

I had saved this recipe to make and I wasn’t really sure what these would be like, but we ended up enjoying them. I was curious how they related to popovers and apparently are almost identical depending on your recipes. From what I could gather, this tends to be the savory version of a popover. But I’m sure I’m wrong on some level there, too. That was my best interpretation, in case you’ve made popovers before. I liked that I didn’t need a special pan or special ingredients. Everything was stuff I have on hand, and you could mix up the herbs.

Breakfast Puff Pastry Packets

Today is a simple recipe that was inspired by some puff pastry recipes I found. I ended up doing my own using some Trader Joe’s dough I had stashed away. If you haven’t tried their puff pastry dough, you should. It’s only available around December, as far as I know, and not only is it a great price but it tastes really good because it is all butter like the DuFour kind. But for whatever reason, I like this one better and have had better luck with it. I didn’t realize it was a limited edition kind of product the first year, so the second year I stocked up!

Whoopie Pies

One of the (many) things I had never made before was whoopie pies. I thought you needed a special pan, or fancy piping…and I didn’t know if they were really worth much effort, especially since recipes usually only make a few. I usually like a decent amount of effort to make desserts that would last us a week or so, just to make it more worthwhile. Otherwise, I’d rather make something more regular like cake/cookies/brownies. Well, I made these with the Fudgelet at his request. And they were worth it. Even worth needing to buy marshmallow fluff.

Fudgelet Adventures (part 17): Homemade Car Garage and colors

I made a car garage for the Fudgelet at some point…I think last year? I honestly can’t remember. I don’t think I documented it because I didn’t think it would turn out. It was a bit challenging because I didn’t have a hot glue gun (thanks Dad and M for my Christmas present!) but it ended up looking decent and the Fudgelet still plays with it. Well, fast forward to some point after the Chiplet was born. The ramp broke because he was a little too rough for it and the tape couldn’t hold it any longer. I realized I could fix it with my new hot glue gun. And then I decided to attempt to make a new one for him.