Snow White Cookies

The Muffin and I decided to decorate some cookies just for fun on the school holidays. I let The Muffin choose the cutters she wanted (girly girly ones of course), and then she had a good idea: "Mummy let's each choose a Princess and do that theme of cookies!" She (predictably) chose Cinderella, but I'd been looking for an excuse to try out my new mini apple cutter, so I chose Snow White.

As it was mainly an activity for The Muffin to enjoy, I let her have most of the control over shapes etc, which meant I only got two: a couple of dresses, and a whole lot of apples! Here's what I came up with:

Poisoned apple, anyone?

No, no, Snow White - don't eat it...!

Oh... too late.

Interestingly, these cookies were all decorated exclusively with 20-second icing (normally I'm an outline-and-flood girl). I loved the way the 20-second icing worked for the sleeves on the Snow White dress - made them nice and puffy. Also the apples. I think 20-second icing is definitely the go for these little mini cookies, and it just goes to show that it can be used to flood and add detail to a larger cookie if you are feeling lazy in a hurry (the red detailing on the front of the bodice was still 20-second icing - I just used a #1 tip after the main part of the dress had more or less dried). The slashes on the sleeves were done using the wet-on-wet technique.

And if you're wondering, here are the cookies The Muffin decorated:

You can't see it, but her dress was all sparkly - you know, from the Fairy Godmother's magic.

It was a fun day!

Muffin Tin Monday - Dinner Under The Sea

It's Muffin Tin Monday! The Muffin requested an Under The Sea theme (again - it seems to be one of her favourite MTM themes). This time it contains:

Top Row: Apple "bubbles"; Quiche; Pikelet fish (sprinkle eye).

Bottom Row: Various "seaweeds" (spinach leaves & carrot) on grated cheese "sand" with an apple crab; Udon noodle "seaweed"; Pikelet fish & a "fish egg" (ie Easter egg).

The After Shot:

She only left a couple of bits of carrot and a leaf.

To see what other mums came up with this week, check out The Muffin Tin Mom's blog.

And if you're after something sweeter, be sure to check back here soon, as there's lots of sugary goodness coming up over the next few weeks!

Muffin Tin Monday - Friends In The Garden

Today The Muffin had a friend (we'll call her S) over to play. Since it is the school holidays, S was able to stay for lunch and have her first ever Muffin Tin Monday!

I used a twelve-hole tin, and the girls sat opposite each other and had six holes each (that way they both got the same food). For food options, I played it pretty safe, as I'm not too familiar with what foods S likes...

First Column (ie bottom row as seen by S): 2 Leaf-shaped Vegemite & cheese sandwiches; Yoghurt with a little raspberry jam mixed in (because I wasn't sure if S was used to unflavoured yoghurt) plus butterfly sprinkles; Flower-shaped Vegemite & cheese sandwich.

Second Column (ie top row as seen by S): Apple flowers; 2 Gummy snails and 3 chocolate rocks; Carrot butterflies.

Third & Fourth Columns: same as the first two, but as seen by The Muffin.

The After Shot:

The Muffin ate the lot, and then asked for some grapes as well. S tried the yoghurt, but "wasn't sure about it" (maybe I should have left it white after all!). She had some grapes too.

The girls had fun eating their garden lunch together, and I think one uneaten thing out of six for a child I don't know very well was pretty good!

To see what other kids had this week, check out The Muffin Tin Mom's blog.

Easter Fun

Okay, so I know Easter is all over and done (apart from the enormous mountain of chocolate currently residing in our cupboard. Wow.), but before we kiss it goodbye entirely, I thought I'd share a few things we did to celebrate on Sunday...

Coloured Eggs

Sure, everybody colours eggs for Easter, right? But we do it a little differently...

We used to do it the normal way (ie boil eggs, then soak in food colouring to colour the shells), but we found that little hairline cracks in the shell would usually cause skanky-looking coloured bits on the egg itself inside, and sometimes there was actual coloured water hiding in there as a nasty surprise for the person who cracked it open (because we colour our eggs to eat, not just to look at). When, a few years ago, my friend's small son ended up with indigo-coloured water running down his arms, I thought to myself, There Has To Be A Better Way.

So then it occurred to me that it's really the shell causing the problem - and Who Needs The Shell, Anyway? So now when we dye eggs, we hard-boil them, shell them, and then dye them. And after just a minute or two (way quicker than dyeing eggs with shells), they look like this:

Aren't they pretty?

And the best part is, it means you don't have to feed people just a whole boiled egg (which is, let's face it, kinda boring) - instead, you can halve them, scoop the yolks out and make a yummy filling to pipe back in...

And they're still pretty!

Sweeties

We had cookies (which I've already posted separately, but here they are on the platter):

Quick & easy chicky cupcakes (with Starburst Chew beaks, which incidentally are So Yummy! - I hadn't had them before):

And The Muffin and I also made some of these M&M birds (this fantastic idea is from Callye at The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle - she did them with sugar almonds as well - so cute, and so very easy!)


The Muffin's Dinner

After all the festivities, none of us wanted a proper dinner, but I wanted The Muffin to eat something halfway decent too, so when she asked for "a cute chicken themed Easter bento", I thought sure, why not?

She had a cheese & Vegemite sandwich cut into three pieces: an Egg With Legs, and two mini chicks. The chicks have black sesame seed eyes, and one of them is just hatching out of a chocolate egg (against my better judgement. But it was out of The Muffin's present stash, so she would have eaten it eventually anyway, and it was Easter, after all). The Egg With Legs has the cheese legs painted with a tiny bit of orange food colour, and icing eyes. There are also spinach leaves, cashews, and grapes.
I'm linking this meal to Bento Of The Week over at Bento Blog Network.

Hope everyone's Easter was as fun as ours - how did you spend yours?

Muffin Tin Monday - Easter Chickens

It's Muffin Tin Monday, Easter Monday edition! As The Muffin is now on holidays, we were able to do her Muffin Tin Meal at lunch time for once - yay!

Top Row: Grapes with a home-made chick pick; Tinned peaches; Chicken cupcake (left over from our party on Easter Sunday).

Bottom Row: Toast soldiers ("twigs", said The Muffin); Yoghurt & coconut "nest"; Soft-boiled egg.

The After Shot:

The Muffin is not a big fan of frosting (I know, I know: Whose Child Is This?), so she scraped the frosting chicken off her cupcake (after carefully removing and eating its beak). She ate everything else.

To see what other Muffin Tin Kids had this week, check out The Muffin Tin Mom's blog.

Lion Cookie

You remember my little Giraffe cookie? Well now he has a friend.


They enjoy walks through the jungle, and hanging out on the African Savannah. Oh yeah, and they always try to take time to eat smell the flowers...

I wonder if they will make any more friends one day?

Oh yeah, and little Leo is my latest (and last, for now!) entry into LilaLoa's Creative Cookie Competition. I do have more ideas, so maybe I'll come up with another entry or two later in the month, but that's all I've got for now! You can see my other entries here, here, here and here- or just check out everyone's entries over at LilaLoa.

Flower Cookie

A Flower for the cookie competition over at LilaLoa:

The Muffin looked at this and said, "Is it meant to be a sunflower?" I answered quite truthfully that I really didn't know what sort of flower it was meant to be, I just sort of let the cookie show me what sort of flower it wanted on it.

Giraffe Cookie

Another entry for LilaLoa's Creative Cookie Competition!

Isn't he cute? Little munchy giraffe looks happy, but maybe a bit lonely... does he need some friends?

Easter Chicken Cookies (and competition entry)

As well as Easter Bunnies (and Carrots for them to eat), I also made some Easter Chickens using that gift box cutter in the cookie competition over at LilaLoa:

CHEEP.

I made some mini chicks, too - at the Sugary Flower household, Easter is all about the chickens this year!


These ones were made at The Muffin's request as gifts for her school friends and teachers:

Each child/teacher got a chick, an egg and a tulip.

Hope you are having a Happy Easter!

Carrots for the Creative Cookie Comp

Hungry for carrots? Here you go then:

(these are being entered in LilaLoa's Creative Cookie Competition) - go check out the competition, it's awesome.

Easter Cookies (and competition entries!)

So if you don't already know (and if you don't already read LilaLoa, then you should), Georganne over at LilaLoa has thrown down the gauntlet, as it were. A cookie challenge. She has nominated a gift box shaped cookie cutter, and challenged anyone who's listening to decorate it - as Anything But A Gift.

As it happens, this timing also coincides with the fact that I needed to make some cookies for Easter. So I made some chickens, and some eggs, and some tulips, and some carrots. And some gift boxes. And then I got out my icing bags, and this is what I came up with:

Hmm, I think those Easter bunnies look a bit hungier than that...

Better!

Happy bunny!

Happy Easter everyone!

(and seriously, go check out some of the awesome entries in this competition - there are some very creative cookiers out there!)

Muffin Tin Monday (Easter!) plus Bonus Bunny Bento

Yesterday was Muffin Tin Monday. We finally got ourselves into gear and made an Easter tin for dinner!

Top Row: Bunny pick with carrot circles; Banana, yoghurt, lime juice & coconut mixture (leftovers from our Indian meal the night before); mini chocolate cupcake with salted caramel buttercream and Easter Egg sprinkles.

Bottom Row: Pikelet chicks with "Mummy Chicken" pick; Easter Bunny bread roll; Pumpkin soup (which is what Husband and I were having).

I was very pleased with how the Easter Bunny bread roll turned out - and it was So Easy! This was a parbaked "Bake At Home" type roll (which we love, and often have with soup), and I just cut a thin wedge out of its head after it was cooked, and then drew the features on with Gourmet Writers. I could even butter it through the hole, so its face wasn't destroyed in the buttering process.

The After Shot:
I was amazed she didn't eat more of the bread roll. Then again, this probably was quite a lot of food, and I think the allure of the cupcake was all too much.

To see what other lucky kids had for breakfast, lunch or dinner this week, check out The Muffin Tin Mom's blog.

But Wait - There's More!

The Muffin also had this bunny bento for lunch yesterday at school:

Dried cranberries, most of a banana with Easter stickers, two TrueFruit bunny heads, pretzel sticks, carrot flowers, and a bunny face & three small egg-shaped sandwiches. Yummy!