Valentine's Day Treat Bags

Every year Kamille and I try to make our own Valentine's Day project and tiny gift to hand out to her friends instead of just sending the premade Valentine's Cards.  This year we are making White Chocolate Chex Mix and she is in love with Owls so I made owl themed treat bag labels.  I like to put candy into the pretzel bag sized bags, so these labels are designed for those bags. 

Click Here to Print and Download
I bought the little owl graphics from an etsy shop Printables By Rhonda.  Here is the shop.  Then, I just used my photo editor to design the little cards.  In preschool we don't write to on the cards because they are just too hard to pass out that way.  So, they only have a from line so that my daughter can practice her name.

For the white chocolate chex, the ingredients are really simple - chex and candy melts.  It takes about 6 cups of chex for 1 pound of candy melts.  I also added Valentine's Day sprinkles.

 Melt the chocolate according to the directions on the package.

 Stir in the chex until coated.  Spread on a greased cookie sheet or wax paper and add sprinkles.

Once it dried, I mixed in marshmallows and sweethearts.  I put everything into the pretzel bags.

Pot of Gold Caramel Corn for St. Patrick's Day

It's official, I have now eaten about half of that cup of caramel corn while making this tutorial and I am now sick.  Dear caramel corn ... why do I love you soooooo much? 

This is a really great basic recipe for caramel corn.  I wanted to make a caramel corn that would work well with beer for St. Patrick's Day.  This caramel corn is loaded with nuts. 

You can check out the full tutorial over on Cut Out and Keep

See St. Patrick's Day Pot Of Gold Caramel Corn and 1000's of others - or share your own on Cut Out + Keep

Preschool Apple Cookies

This is a little set of cookies I made for the preschool open house.  They are a basic sugar cookie cut really think.  Then, I bake them per the usual recipe directions.  Once they come out of the oven I let them cool slightly.  Then, using the same cookie cutter, I cut a piece of colored marshmallow fondant (the recipe is on the blog) and use it to decorate the cookie.  Finally, I just piped an outline with white frosting to make them pop. 

I Want S'more Caramel Corn

I have been dying to make some sort of smore inspired caramel corn for several months now.  I finally had the time to develop this great recipe:

1 batch of air popped pop corn (or 2 bags of microwave popcorn)

place the popcorn in a greased 9x13 or larger pan and put it into the oven at 220 while you make the caramel

For the caramel:

1 cup butter

2 cups brown sugar

1/2 cup corn syrup

1 tbsp molasses

1 tsp cinnamon

 Mix all of the ingredients together and bring to a boil over medium heat in a very heavy pan. 

 Once the mixture comes to a rolling boil (i.e. a boil that you cannot stir down) then you remove it from the heat and mix in 1 tbsp of baking soda.  It is going to foam up.  This is the right thing.  Baking soda is going to make the caramel crisper.

 Stir the caramel sauce around until you have all of your warmed popcorn coated. 

You need to keep the caramel corn in the oven at 220 for the next hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

 While your caramel corn is cooking, you should cut up 1 bag of mini candy bars into thirds.  You could use chocolate chips, but I love the look and taste of the candy bars.  Once the caramel corn is totally cool, you can mix in 2 cups of mini marshmallows and the candy bars.  You could also add some mini graham crackers like teddy grahams, but the caramel has a flavor similar to a graham cracker. 

Valentine's Day Tarts

I was actually inspired by a post you probably saw on our blog, Lisa's jack-o-lantern pop tarts to create this Valentine's Day version.

I started with some strawberry jam and premade pie dough. 

Then, I used a big heart shaped cookie cutter to cut out an even amount of hearts.  You may need to roll the scraps out to get another heart out of one pie crust. 

 Next, I piled a big scoop of jam into the middle of 1/2 of the hearts.

Then, I layered another heart on top and crimped the sides with a fork. 

 Finally, I put them onto a sheet of parchment on a baking sheet and baked them for 10-12 minutes at 425.

 They are sooo good.  I'm eating one with some coffee right now =).