Easter Bunnies!

Easter is coming up, and my 12 yr old cousin decides that he isn't happy with the Easter candy that he has previously received. He told my grandma, that he hates hollow Easter bunnies and cannot have another one. So grandma and I went to the flea market and bought candy molds and made out own. I've done different chocolate molds several times but this was my grandma's first.

They turned out pretty well after a few oops along the way.

We started with several different colors of chocolate, that we tinted instead of buying all the different color chips. Saves some money that way. My trick is to cut a very small hole in a few plastic baggies use them for the piping. A lot of people use paint brushes, but I think its easier this way. The only one I didn't put in a bag was the brown chocolate one, because I just spooned that one in.

After getting all the chocolate ready, I melted each color (yes while in the baggie) for only 10 seconds at a time, until it was melted enough to start filling in the mold. And repeated this for each of the colors until all the details were filled in and ready for the brown chocolate.

Another trick I've learned throughout all of this process, is that you should add a little vegetable oil in each thing of chocolate, so that when it finally hardens it has an extra shine to it. This makes it look extra pretty and professional!

Then after you finish the detail work, freeze it for just a minute or two. This hardens that chocolate, so that when you pour a bunch of chocolate on top of it, it doesn't melt, smear or change the shape you wanted right away. So pouring the chocolate should be a quick process. The bunnies we made only took about 10 minutes to freeze after pouring the last bit of chocolate in it.

After freezing them, most molds just let them pop out. I've never had any problems with them breaking, unless they were very intricate or thin candies. These popped out perfectly and looked great. A couple of them the eyes looked a little wonky, but thats half the fun of homemade chocolate right?? ;)

Sorry about the paper towel background, didn't have my normal stuff to take pictures at my grandma's house.

They look good though!

After this we packaged them up in bags I found at Hobby Lobby, on sale of course, added a few jelly bean eggs and Viola we have solid chocolate Easter Bunnies!

This was a ton of fun, and loved spending time with Grandma. Hopefully it inspired some of you to make your own Easter Bunnies

Cookie Care Packages

Spring Cookies

So I lied.. I was going to write about the dressing (which turned out amazing) I made for my chicken salads tonight, but instead I figured I'd tell you a story and share some pictures about the cookies I'm mailing tomorrow!

Amanda from I am Baker needed some help fulfilling some cookie care packages for all of the amazing people who needed a little pick me up in their lives. I of course was more than welcome to help make some cookies and spread some cheer.

I figured in light of cheering people up, a few spring themed cookies would go over well, especially since my family had young children. I'm still new to this decorating pretty sugar cookies, but getting the hang of it slowly. They taste delicious, and look cute, so they should enjoy them!

For A Special Blogger Friend

It was a great feeling to do something great for someone else. I love baking and doing charity stuff, so combining the two was really a blessing. Then on top of it, a fellow blogger is going through a rough time as well. So I made her a great care package too! I'll post the pictures and let you guys guess who its for, until she receives it! Here are some pictures of the cookies Just to give you an idea! Maybe later I'll do a tutorial on flooding cookies with recipes and all of that.

Can't go Wrong with a few Bunnies

Those are just a few of the cookies I made, and hopefully everyone getting care packages enjoy them. More stuff to come, hope every enjoys!

Good night!

Manda

Hello World!

Hello all! I'm Amanda (Manda) and I'm going to share my life and its adventures with you. I'm a crafter by nature, a photographer at heart, and frugal as possible. I make everything I can, clip coupons, and really enjoying making things for other people. I follow tons of blogs, and love reading about everyone else's ups, downs, and wonderful masterpieces, so I thought I'd start to share mine as well.

If you want to know more about me please ask, I'm really looking forward to meeting and enjoying all of my new friends that could come out of this.

Later tonight I'll be making wonderful chicken salads, for the entire family (back story to follow) and I'll show you my healthy version of a new salad dressing we are working on.