Valentine's Chocolates

This was the end result of my chocolate making fun. There were two of these darling little boxes for my two darling little girls on valentines day. I only have the one picture due to battery failure on the camera and the speed that little girls can eat chocolates. The finished boxes were two layers with the rose lollipop on top with one additional marshmallow lip. The bottom layer that you can see here had two lips filled with marshmallows, three cherry filled hearts, two blueberry roses, and two almond butter balls. It was so wonderful to see my girls carefully pick which chocolate to eat next and to see the joy on their faces from having an entire box of different chocolate candies. I am already thinking big for Easter. I am hoping that this year they will get their first chocolate bunnies.

update update, chocolate & preschool

on the chocolate front...
I have mastered the nut butter to chocolate ratio in a nut butter cup. they how ever do not look very pretty. to be honest they look like lumps of poo. Kaitlyn has however given them the official thumbs up and requested several more.
I however still have not made any caramel. i need to make sweetened condensed milk from soy milk and buy some arrowroot. The condensed milk looks easy enough to make but haven't bothered to yet since i have forgotten to buy arrowroot for 3 trips to the store.
If i can make a decent caramel, twix bars are in the future. mounds bars are also on the to-do list. Of the chocolates that i have made so far the fruit filled hearts are my favorite with marshmallow lips coming in second. The almond butter cups are good but almond butter is NOT peanut butter and well peanut butter is better. Although i am tempted to make peanut butter cups, with Kaitlyn the risk is not worth it.
in the preschool universe....
"P" week was sooooo much fun. We painted. We made Puppets. We did Pattern blocks. We made Play dough. We ate pizza and made pirogies. Anyway P week was a blast. I was worried that "Q" week would be dull. What fun things to do start with Q? Well i found i science lesson on Quick sand, it was so much fun. In fact we will be making quicksand again for S week so we can compare and contrast sand and quicksand. Super neat stuff quicksand. We also made quilt blocks. They were fun but not as cool as quicksand. Today we have started "R" week. In my web browsing for spring planting and then fun R things to do, I am sure i am now on the the FBI's watch list. i started the day with fertilizer, poly tunnels and polyurethane coverings, composting mixes, how to hide fertilizer or compost bins, gardening in plane site, home made rockets, rocket fuel, fuel for the home made rocket. well you can see how maybe those searches might have put up a red flag some where. If i can't come up with a preschool level rocket experiment, we will stick to recycling, rescue responders and (if i can locate a prism) rainbows. Not that rainbows aren't cool, it's just not a rocket.
Well I had better go. Laundry is calling and i really need to get some sewing done.

chocolate candies

I have been making chocolates today.
I was good and didn't sample my creations as i was making them. Once they were made is a different story. Here at almost 1 in the morning I have eaten far far to many.
They turned out very pretty. Little chocolate hearts and chocolate lips filled with fruit or marshmallows. Oh and they taste even better than they look. Yummy!
Well maybe they don't taste very good. My point of reference is a little skewed. Finding dairy free chocolate candy is very hard to do. And generally if you do find some, the chocolate tastes so bad you wish you hadn't found any at all. So they taste really really really good to me. Husband keeps sneaking them out of the kitchen so they can't be to bad.
With some effort i have made good tasting peanut butter cup filling out of almond butter. So tomorrow I will be making almond butter cups. If you thought finding dairy free chocolate candy was hard..... finding peanut & dairy free chocolate candy is almost impossible.
So I have given up looking!
I want my kids to eat candy like every other kid out there!
So I am making it my-self!
I have found a caramel recipe with favorable reviews. If the almond butter cups go well caramel hearts are next. Then maybe twix bars. Who knows I just might figure out how to make nougat after that.