This how-to is easy when you don’t want to go out. Keep these items in your pantry and you’ll be good to go any night of the week.

ingredients:
focaccia
pizza sauce or marinara
mozzarella cheese
pepperoni
mushrooms
shredded italian cheese

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prep a baking pan with a silpat.

Now I happened to have focaccia bagged up in my freezer. I cut the 3 pieces in half – they were rather TALL pieces, and got 6 flatter slices of bread.

I usually keep homemade sauce (leftover from when I make spaghetti) in the freezer, this was a good use to get rid of it but you can also buy jarred pizza or marinara sauce. Spoon that on top of the focaccia, about 2 Tablespoons on each piece.

Then lay a slice of mozzarella on top of the sauce. On top of this you can layer whatever toppings you like. The Kid like mushrooms, the Baby likes pepperoni.

Then on top of your toppings, add about 1/4 cup of shredded Italian cheese – parmesan, mozzarella, provolone is a good mix that you can usually find bagged together in the store. Adding the shredded cheese on top will keep all the toppings together and give the top a nice melty cheese effect.

Place above the middle rack in your oven and bake for 20-25 minutes depending on your oven. Watch it, you don’t want burnt cheese.

The focaccia gave the pizza a nice crunch. It was the perfect base for a pizza with just enough heft to hold all the toppings. I served it to the kids with fruit, veggies and OF COURSE, ice cream sandwiches for dessert.

Does this really need a how-to? No, it’s pretty self explanatory but it was a lot of fun to do with the kids. I had the boys write down all the foods they could think of according to color, then I had them help me lay them out in a cupcake pan.

This is something I like to pull out when the kids have friends over for playdates. They seem to think it’s a lot of fun, and it’s great to hear them think of other things that we could have put in there, as well as seeing the kids try new things. Note: No one ate the spinach, but hey it was worth a shot.

I had major dental surgery and am now toothless. While I should be on a steady diet of anything through a straw, I still jammed a piece of cake on the ‘good side’ of my mouth and chewed it up. Hey, a girl can try.

However the Kid got right to work on my new liquid diet. He said he wanted to make smoothies and when I went to get the blender, I turned around and he’d already drawn up a visual recipe for me to follow. He’s a quickdraw! He made me follow his instructions EXACTLY and it came out fantastic.

ingredients:
16 ounces frozen strawberries
1 banana (cut up)
1 cup apple juice

The ingredients in this are simple. While I wanted to add some more ’stuff’ the Kid wouldn’t hear of it. He was right. Simple was best.

Frozen strawberries are great because it gives you just the right amount of slush factor without having to add ice. Blend frozen strawberries, banana and apple juice in a blender. Add more apple juice if you need to, but not too much.

Blend until the smoothie starts to turn in on itself like a mini tornado. That’s how you know it’s ready!

Saturday morning the Kid woke me up at 6am – very concerned about Haiti. For a six year old, that Kid has a lot of worries. I thought a fun and interesting way to help would be to go to the Food Trucks for Haiti fundraiser in West L.A. Not only would part of the profits go to the Red Cross, but we’d get to sample some of the best food trucks in Los Angeles.

This is my main reason I don’t let the kids eat fast food – there are so many better ways to spend your money locally on great tasting food without preservatives. The Kid said he loved everything he ate and felt good that we were giving money to a good cause. My little foodie philanthropist.

This is the happiest little cake Darth Vader has ever seen. Why I combined rainbows and Darth Vader for the Kid’s birthday, I don’t know – doing a dark chocolate would be too easy, right?? But the Kid LOVES Star Wars and hey – he’s 6, so let’s celebrate! A perfect cake for the dark lord in all of us. This was fun and tasty and I love that the candle is a lightsaber, hilarious!

ingredients:
white cake batter
(this Very Vanilla Cake works well – if you decide to use box mix, UGH, just don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.)
5 different colors of gel food coloring

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prep two round cake pans by lining the bottom with parchment and buttering right on top of it, doing the sides of the pan as well.

I used the Very Vanilla cake recipe and divided the batter into 5 small bowls. You should get about 1 cup in each bowl. I dyed each of the bowls of batter a different color. Gel dye is the best because you need very little of it.

What you are going to do is make two round rainbow cakes, so the batter will be divided equally into two pans – follow? Probably not, that’s why I tried to take pictures. Let’s just hope for the best.

Now pour HALF of one bowl of batter – let’s say blue to start – right in the center of the first pan. The rest will go into the center of the second pan.Then take the second bowl, green, and pour half of that RIGHT into the center of the blue. Go on, don’t worry. The batter will spread all on it’s own. IT’S LIKE MAGIC. Or not. Then take the orange, pour half THAT right into the center of the previous color, and so on and so on.

Eventually you will have TWO pans of cake batter ready to roll that look like this:

Bake for 18-20 minutes depending on your oven, until your cake comes out nice passes the toothpick test perfectly. Let cool in pans, then invert onto a wire rack to cool completely.

They look like targets, but when you slice into it, trust me, it will all come together. I stacked the two cakes (with frosting in between, of course) and I just frosted this with a tinted blue vanilla buttercream.

Just for kicks and cause the Kid loves them, I and added a few Godiva White Chocolate Balls around the edges. If you want to see how SUPER EASY it is to stencil lettering onto a cake (for all of you scared of fondant) go HERE.

Darth Vader LOVES rainbows. I’m sure your kids will love this cake too.

*How I frosted the lettering in the Star Wars font (it was easy): Stencil Lettering how-to, here.

The morning of the Kid’s birthday I threw a Rainbow Cake together right quick, there was no planning so I didn’t have time to roll out fondant and do a whole thing. Writing on a cake with frosting is easy. But sometimes you want things to look a little cleaner – as if you really put in a lot of effort….but in reality you are just kind of lazy. Here’s a good way to fake it.

Since I wanted to stick with the Star Wars theme, I printed out wording in Star Wars font on heavy cardstock. Using an x-acto I cut out the letters.

Now you have a template. I laid this on top of the already frosted cake, and using a different color of frosting, I just went through and tried to stay within the stencil. Even if you go over or screw up it doesn’t matter, the beauty of it is when you lift the stencil off, you’ll have clean lettering – honest!

This is a super quick way to get fancy lettering done fast!

(Fondant lettering how-to is similar)

I got this sandwich maker for xmas and was SO excited only to find out there were no images of Hello Kitty burned into the sandwich. What.

Nope, just a plain old sandwich press. BO- to the RING. Oh well. I had promised the kids sandwiches for dinner, so we tried it out anyway.

I was going for a ‘pizza pocket’ so I set up pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, colby cheese, salami, turkey and olives. (These were the ingredients requested, btw).

My SIL went heavy on the olives, the Kid went heavy on the cheese, and the Baby? Just meat. Nothin’ else. He couldn’t be bothered, I guess.

As everyone assembled their sandwiches, I buttered both sides of the bread and stuck it in. Oddly enough, the Baby’s (cheese-less) turned out the BEST. Just perfect little sandwich shapes! Meanwhile the overloaded cheese did a number on the machine and it was a cheese-apocalypse. Melted cheese everywhere that took me over and hour to try and scrape off. Not. Good.

I love this thing, but really the clean up will be the death of me. Since this one only cost $10 at Target, I’m thinking I should go big pimpin’ and buy a ‘professional’ one, I think (hope) the clean up wouldn’t be such a nightmare.

The kids (and the SIL) had so much fun making their own sandwiches they asked to do it again the following night! I’d still like a Hello Kitty face burned into mine, just sayin’.

In Kindergarten they were writing about what they will be doing over Christmas. Here’s what the Kid wrote:

“My mom and I are going to bake cakes for Satan.”

Yikes. Those would be the most evil cakes ever. Poor Santa.

The Kid loves to bake with me and this weekend he asked for something specific – his favorite Mini French Breakfast Muffins. They are really easy to make and a perfect one bowl recipe, so the Kid knows that he can do all the steps himself.

They were so delicious I took a batch of them to eat and give out to friends as I sold stuff at a craft show. It’s the cinnamon and sugar that keep you wanting more, I tell ya. Later the Kid asked where his muffins were….um. Guess we’ll be making more soon.

Mini French Breakfast Muffins

Sunday morning is my favorite time to cook. No school to rush off to – just a leisurely morn – except that the kids wake up at 5:30 and demand breakfast. Oh yeah. That part. So I start it, set it up and by getting them involved they happily entertain themselves. Good. Clean it up too while you’re at it, I’m going back for some zzz’s…

ingredients:
pancakes, obviously – this recipe is the kid’s favorite.
anything for toppings – shredded coconut, fresh fruit, chocolate chips, nuts

You can just use a plain old pancake of course, but here’s a trick my mom used to make for us when we were kids: On a hot buttered pan take a spoonful of pancake batter, make eyes and mouth.

The idea is to the let the face components cook a bit, to get a little dark.Then go ahead and ladle a spoonful of batter on top of the face, to cover, making a circle. (Well, attempt to, at least.)

When you flip it – HELLO FACE. This just really serves as a template, you don’t need to do it, but it’s fun.

Now gather all of your toppings and let the kids go at it with the decorating. I like to use a mini muffin tin because it portions things smaller and also keeps everything pretty neat.

Every night the kid’s and I do an “After Dinner Art” project, and this is sort of the same idea…but with food! It’s really cool to see the ideas they come up with!

A traditional mac ‘n’ cheese starts with a roux. This is not a traditional mac ‘n’ cheese. This is easy fo’ sheezy mac ‘n’ cheese where you get your kids to do most of the work so you can kick it and watch Oprah. And the kicker? It’s baked with a topping of crushed up Goldfish crackers! How cheesy is that? No child (or adult) can resist…

ingredients:
1 lb pasta (I prefer pennette)
4 cups cheese
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 bag goldfish crackers (save 1 cup, crush the rest)
1 Tablespoon butter

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 9×13 pan. Boil the pasta according to the package.

While it’s boiling, in a large bowl, combine THREE cups of cheese (setting aside one cup), cream, milk, salt, pepper and paprika. Set aside.

Set aside one cup of goldfish crackers, and put the rest in a freezer bag. Now get a kid full of aggression who likes to bash things, luckily, I have one – give him a rolling pin and stand back. Let him go at the freezer bag of goldfish, til all are crushed. Take away the rolling pin. (This is for your own safety and sanity.)

By now the pasta should be ready. Drain it in a colander, then immediately pour into the bowl of cheese and stuff. Stir ’round until it’s all melty and combined. Pour into your prepped pan. Top with the reserved one cup of cheese and the crushed goldfish crackers AND the whole goldfish crackers. You are putting the whole ones just cause the kids get a kick out of seeing whole goldfish crackers sitting on top of the pasta. Add dabs of the butter here and there on the top of the crackers.

Place your pan on a baking sheet – this is in case it bubbles over. No one wants a cheesy oven to clean up – trust me. Bake for 20-25 minutes depending on your oven, until bubbly. Let cool a bit before serving.

This makes a good side dish OR main dish. And the kids really get into helping since it’s just mixing and crushing! Sure this is kid’s food but uh…I like to sneak a few bites late at night. Usually while standing over my sink in my pjs…