It's like eating chocolate clouds!

The other day Sister Bacon was up for a visit! I love it when I get to see my siblings because it's not all that often it happens. And the kids loved seeing Auntie Bacon as well.  While she was here I decided to try out a new 'fluff' recipe I found to see if it was good. You know when it's best time to try experimental recipes on your guests right?

 "Here try some of this. If you're still doing good in 5 minutes I'll try some too!"

Normally I try things out first but this one turned out good anyway.  And it's super easy.  The next night I was looking for a quick dessert for the kids and thought I'd whip up some of these pudding fluff cups for them! 

I love this recipe because it's super easy and fast. The kids love it because they can help make it and it tastes awesome! Even Little Boy Bacon said "Mom this tastes just like eating chocolate clouds!"  Man I love that kid!

Here's what you need:

Pudding fluff:
1 box instant pudding- any flavor and any size
1/2 the milk required on box to mix up the pudding
same amount of whip cream as milk. (you can use store bought or mix your own from heavy cream)

Take the pudding and milk and mix together.  If you are using a small box of pudding and it calls for 2 cups of milk, you want to use half the amount or one cup.  If you are using a big box of pudding and it calls for 3 cups milk, you want to use 1.5 cups ect.  Mix those up good. The kids can help with this part. 

 Once it's mixed together, you want to take your whipped cream and fold it in.  Use the same amount of whipped cream as you did milk.  Gently fold, do not mix this or you'll lose the fluffiness.  I usually do this part because none of the kids have figured out what I mean by folding yet. When I said I had to fold the whipped cream in Little boy Bacon asked if it was like folding the towels he as to do for chores!  Someday they'll be expert cooks, until then I'll do the food folding. 

 There you have the pudding fluff! You can do lots of things with this now. Sister Bacon and I just ate it by the spoon full! YUM!  You can add in things like crushed up cookies, mini chocolate chips, M&M's, or other candies.  You can use it as a dip. Some vanilla pudding would make a great fruit dip!  You can even use it to frost a cake with.  Just make sure to store the cake in the fridge once it's frosted.

I decided to crush up some graham crackers I had laying around. 

I put a few scoops into the bottom of a cute dessert cup.  Added a big scoop of the pudding fluff on top and added a dollop of whipped cream I had leftover from the mix.  This was such a huge hit with the kids they even asked for seconds!

It's a good thing this isn't a health food blog!

 Because I wouldn't have been able to post these AMAZING brownies.  We had some company coming over Labor day so I asked the kids what treats we should make.  They all said we should try something new.  I have a list of new recipes I'd like to try and the kids picked these brownies out.  I have to say it was a winner! Good enough that I had to share with all of you.  These would be the perfect snack for the kids as they get off the bus.  Oh how I'm ready for back to school. I know many of my readers have sent their kids off to school already but here in Minnesota we always start after Labor day.  And this year it's not until Thursday!  Lucky for me I have enough time to whip up another batch of these bars before then!

Peanut butter layer brownies
1- 9x13 pan brownies baked- go ahead use your own mix or a box!
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1.5 cups of your favorite add in (mini Reese's pieces, M&M's, mini chocolate chips, crushed cookies ect)

First bake up your pan of brownies and let them completely cool.  That seems pretty easy right?!

Next place your softened butter and peanut butter in a bowl and mix.  You can do this by hand too, I just toss it in my handy mixer. 

 Toss in your sugars and mix for a minute or two until it's fluffy.  

Then it's time to add the milk and vanilla.   

 Once those are creamed together, it's time to add in your flour and mix.  It should be nice and thick now like cookie dough. Go ahead and give it a try!  YUM right?!  Oh and this is safe to eat just like this since there is no raw eggs.  Yes I'm thinking of making this as a mommy treat too when the kids go to school sans brownies!  Perhaps even freeze them in little balls and leave in the freezer for when I need something sweet.

Once all of that is mixed up it's time to add in the goodies, about a cup to cup and a half of them! I choose these fun mini Reese's pieces in cute fall colors. I love fall and I'm ready for it to be here! Mix what ever add in you choose with the rest of the peanut butter dough. 

Then take the dough and press it on top of the brownies.  Give it a good pat down to make sure the 2 layers will stick together.  No need to bake, just slice them up.  Don't they look good?  They will amaze you.  Oh and yes they are quite rich. I cut a few bars this size below and I had to go back and make them smaller yet. Even Little Miss Bacon who is all sweet tooth said they were too big and sweet for her at first!  Enjoy your bars, let me know if you made them for after school snack and how it went!

It's a fun word to say and keeps the kids busy

We are in our final days of summer for the Bacon kids.  School starts back up next week. I'm not sure what Bacon Bit will think of the empty and quiet house. I'm pretty sure he'll miss his playmates.  But since this is the last week before school starts, I think the kids have kicked up the 'I'm bored' a lot more.  It was time for a fun science experiment.  Thankfully it requires very little to wow the kids and it kept them busy for quite a while!  Digging though the pantry I found a box of cornstarch. I never really used this stuff in baking but for some reason there sat a box in my pantry.  Having remembered a recipe from when the kids were in  ECFE I decided to show them the fun of Ooblek. What you say? Surly you've heard of ooblek? No. Well learn along with us. The kids were just fascinated by the name of this stuff, but I told the to wait until they saw what it does!

First you need to start off with equal cornstarch and water.  And a big bowl to mix it up in.  Now if you want to make fun colors I suggest putting a drop of two of food coloring into the water before mixing.  Pour both water and cornstarch in the bowl and start mixing.  The goal is to mix it until it runs off the spoon easy. Clumpy like the green stuff here needs a little more water. Add small amounts until you get a runny consistency like the pink stuff below.

Now the fun part, go ahead, knock on it. Cool hun? It's hard.

Now rest your fingers just on the top of it and watch them magically sink in.

The kids were in awe!  They had a lot of fun. Bacon Jr. had fun getting it to stick to his hand and picking up the bowl.

Little Miss Bacon had fun watching it drip off her fingers.

Even Bacon bit had a bowl to play in. It was a great activity to do on one of those 'I'm bored' days.  Or rainy days or days you just want to be the cool mom!

And you can add a lid and save it for fun the next day too! I did find that it only lasts a few days though before it starts to smell and go bad but the kids can have fun while it lasts!

Birthday Busy

 It was that time of the year again, both Bacon Jr. and Little Boy Bacon's birthdays come 4 days apart from each other in July. That means a lot of cake at the Bacon house!  This year since we've been so busy I actually thought about buying their cake from the store bakery.  That was until I glanced at the prices, $19.99!! I about fell over right there. I promptly headed for the baking aisle instead.  Bacon Jr wanted a Lego star wars cake this year.  Gosh these kids keep me on my toes with ways to wow them with my very armature cake decorating skills!  But I try to not disappoint them.  I found an idea a while back how to copy characters right from a coloring book page with frosting onto cakes that I thought I'd give it a try for this challenge.  First find our character, Bacon Jr. wanted Jedi Luke for his cake. I quickly scanned a copy with my computer scanner and got started. If it was just from a coloring book I wouldn't have scanned it, I would have just used the page but we couldn't even find a free online color picture he liked so we choose one from his book.

 Next I whipped up some homemade frosting.  Then I grabbed a Ziploc type baggie and inserted my cake tip to the inside, snipped the bag and added the other tip pieces and viola! instant disposable cake decorating baggie.  These work great for small amounts of frosting. Trust me I've tried it to decorate sugar cookies with lots of frosting and all I got was busted bag seems!  Ahh... it's the little tips that save others headache!

  Then take some wax paper and place it over your color sheet.  I taped mine to the sheet to make sure it wouldn't move as I frosted it.

Then I took one color and outlined the picture. It's a good tip to remember when you are doing this that the frosting you put on first will be the top layer of the design when you lay it on the cake. Also this will be a mirror image when it's on the cake if you're ok with that!

 Then take a new color and add that to the picture.  I filled in the body with black, mixed up some peach for the face and hand, yellow for the hair and a nice green light saber.  Normally after I outline I would have made sure to put the face on before filling in over the top, however I was working with a picture that was only 3.5 inches in size. I do not recommend this!  It was very hard to do, but that was the size I needed for the cake. The bigger the picture, the easier it is to make the fine details on it. 

   Now that my Luke was complete it was time for him to 'chill out' in the freezer for a while. I left it in there for about an hour just because I was busy decoration the house. I'm sure 15 minutes would have been enough. 

While it's in the freezer it's a great time to frost the cake too!

 Now it's time to take out your frozen character. You can lift off the wax paper and tada! Magic right?

 Gently flip your frosting image over and place it on your cake where you'd like it. Then gently peel the wax paper away. 

 There you have it! A very happy birthday boy! I finished making the face by using edible pens. Ok so the pen isn't edible but the 'ink' is. YUMMY and FUN!

 

 And no I didn't forget about Little Boy Jr.'s birthday cake either, his was a bit less complicated.  All he wanted was a bobber cake!  He loves fish and fishing even more.  I took two 1 quart bowls and baked my cake in there, bake a small ramekin too and assemble and frost! He loved his special cake too!

 Now what is the best way to end the perfect birthday when your a kid? With a campfire you got to help build of course! Complete with blue and green flames thanks to Grandma Bacon!  Whew, it's over and I was an exhausted mama, but I had two very happy boys and two awesome birthday cakes for very little money!

I'm Shining!

 Yes I'm just beaming!  For a few reasons.  First off I found these pictures that were lost in camera space. What is camera space you ask? That's when you download your pictures to your computer and shove them all in a folder because you are in a hurry and forget about them for months until you randomly open it! Surprise, pictures you forgot about.  I was so happy to find these I headed right over here to post them.
But the other reason I'm beaming tonight is from all the love I found from my fans at Pinterest!  Over 3000 views in the past two days! WOW!  Thanks everyone for checking out my little blog.  I hope you all stick around and find helpful stuff.  And as always 'pin' away as long as you give credit back to Ma Bacon and the blog! One other reason to beam, I had such a nice email left for me when I woke up this morning from a blog reader.  It was so nice to be told how much someone else appreciates my blog. Really you guys just amazed me with all the love you sent! Thank you!!

So now back on to these pictures.  Do you have stainless steel appliances?  I will say I told Mr. Bacon many times in the three and a half years we've had these appliances that I would NEVER buy another stainless steel appliance again!  Especially a fridge with a water/ice maker.  They leave horrible water spots (it could be from the 4 bacon kids trying to help themselves too!)

 And it seems like they are always covered with finger prints, those tiny little joys I'm sure I'll miss when they move out, but they seem to love to touch the fridge after I polish it.  I had tried everything to get those water stains out, heck even the finger prints were getting tough to get off with the polish I was using. Oh and it wasn't just the fridge, nope the dishwasher and stove were covered in them too!  So it was off to do some research again. 



I'm happy to say I found something and fell in love instantly thanks to a tip from another mama I know!  She recommended Bar Keepers Friend and I haven't picked up any other polish in over 6 months since.  This comes in a can and it's in a powder form.  And a bonus, it's cheap! Under $1.50 for this bad boy!  So once you get this stuff, what do you do with it?





First you will need a small container. I used an old baby food cup, but anything will do.  Pour some bar keepers friend in it. Honestly I guessed, maybe a 1/4 cup at first. Then add water 1 tsp at a time to the powder and mix until you get a paste.  Then dig out three towels.  I used one rag to put the paste on, one to wash it off and then a microfiber towel to buff afterwards.   

 Work in small sections as you do this. I would do a 8"x8" or so square and then wash it off.  Now there is a trick to putting this on.  First you want to be GENTLE when you put it on or you'll scratch the stainless steel (take it from me first hand!)  Also work in the same direction as the 'grain' of the steel.  This will help minimize any scratches too.  Once you get it on, wipe it off with a rinse rag.  I kept an ice cream pail of water to help rinse too.  Then buff it dry.  It's that simple!  And check out how great it works!  The left half of the fridge has been cleaned, and no more water stains!

 

 It was amazing. I don't think I've ever been so happy to clean before! Yes I'm sure Mr. Bacon thought I was a bit odd when he heard the squeals of delight as I washed the fridge, but he was happy to not see the ugly water stains too.  Check out how the fridge and dishwasher turned out, pretty amazing I think!

Sure was a beautiful sunset!

There have been way too many hot days for this mama!  The 90's can go away any day now. I know that's a cool down where some of you live, but just remember in January when it's 30 out we still wear shorts and only once it gets below 0 do many of us wear winter coats in MN! With all the hot days that leaves little clouds in the skies, and leaves for quite nice sunsets.  Mr. Bacon and I have been enjoying quite a few of them outside around the campfire with the kids running around. But I also found an new sunset to enjoy, the adult kind! And I wanted to share it with all of you. It might just be the perfect sunset to enjoy while watching fireworks tomorrow.


Here is what you need:
1.5 oz UV Whipped vodka
3 oz sours mix
2 oz Orange juice
1/2 oz grenadine
cool whip (optional)

First if you don't have sours mix, don't worry you can make it easy enough I found out.  It's all equal parts which makes it even Mr. Bacon poof at goofing up!

First take 1 cup water and mix it with 1 cup sugar.  Now the fun part and the part I let the kids help with, squeezing the lemons and limes.  Little Boy Bacon actually likes to eat lemons so he always sneaks in a few bites!  You want fresh lemon and lime juice for the best tasting sour mix. I have been buying lots of them this summer to slice and enjoy in my water too so I did have these on hand.  You will need 1 cup of lemon and one cup of lime juice.  I have to say this can take a lot of lemons and limes!  I actually cut this recipe in 1/2 when I made it so I didn't have to use quite so many.  And It was just Mr. Bacon and myself drinking it so we didn't need a ton.  I found even for 1/2 cup each took about 2 lemons and 3 limes to get.  

Once you get your cup of each,  mix them all together and put them in a fridge safe container.  Next grab your shot glass and a larger cup to mix the drink in.  You can also use a drink shaker and shake this up.  Mix in your cup orange juice, sours and vodka.  Mix or shake well.  Next pour it into your fancy glass (optional but doesn't it look so nice!) Once that is in the glass, you can add your 1/2 oz of grenadine. Because it's heavier than the other mix it will sink to the bottom. (yes the Bacon kids got a science lesson after they squeezed the lemon and limes!) Add a dollop of cool whip to the top of the drink and a few cherries on a toothpick (optional also!) and ENJOY!

 

Now you didn't think I'd leave out the kids did you?  After all this is a family blog!  Here's a fun drink you can mix up for the kids to enjoy for our Independence day too.  And bonus, they get the same science experiment out of it.

Red, White and Blue:
4oz blue kool aid or Gatorade
4oz lemon lime soda
1 oz grenadine
Ice
Glass or clear plastic cup

Fill cup with ice.  Pour in the grenadine.  Next very carefully pour the soda over the ice and then the blue kool aid.  The grenadine will stay at the bottom until it's mixed in. Red, white and blue!! Once you mix them together you get a purple drink. Great for the kiddos!

 Have a Happy and Safe 4th of July to all my American friends!