Ding Dong Spider Recipe

Last week we made Ding-Dong Spiders, and the kids loved it!  I made a recipe card and they loved following the recipe to make their own spider!

If you're interested in the recipe card, just send me an e-mail (preschoolsnacks@yahoo.com) and I'll e-mail it to you!

Halloween Cupcakes

Just wanted to show you a little fun we had with cupcakes this year! I thought they turned out pretty cute and fun!

Monster Cupcakes: Decorated with chocolate eyeballs and gummy teeth.

Ghost Cupcakes: Wrap a tissue around a sucker, tie with ribbon and draw eyes.

Spider Cupcakes: Oreo body, licorice legs, m&m eyes.

Pup Cakes

I made these for my Dog's birthday party and they were a hoot!I got the idea from this greatest cupcake book of all time!Here's what you need: cupcakes, frosting, mini marshmallows, tootsie rolls, decorative things (the recipe calls for black jellybean for the nose, I think mini m&m's for the eyes and a pink circus peanut for the tongue but I didn't want to buy a whole bag of m&m's and jellybeans just for the brown/black ones so I used chocolate chips for the eyes, a chocolate covered peanut for the nose and a pink airhead for the tongue). Simplify! ;)

Here's what you do: put a dollop of frosting and 3 mini marshmallows where you want the 'nose' to be. Then cover the marshmallows and rest of the cupcake with frosting and add the face parts! Eyes, nose, tongue! The ears are flattened tootsie rolls. We put them in the microwave for a few seconds to soften them and then rolled them out with a rolling pin.

What do you think? Do they look a little like my dog?

Taste a Rainbow

"Holy Time-Consuming Batman!!!" These take a lot of prep time but ... are totally worth it in the end! I made them for our preschool kids today and we let them frost the top with green frosting - it was so fun to see the kids eyes light up when they saw the rainbow!

The recipe:

*Prepare your favorite vanilla cake mix recipe (or box)

*Divide prepared cake mixture into 6 different bowls

*Use food coloring to color each bowl of prepared cake mixture

(red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple)

*Layer the prepared cake mixture one at a time in muffin lined tins

*Bake according to directions

*Frost with favorite frosting recipe

Yummied up Brownies

Ever wonder what to do with your left-over chocolates from Valentine's or any other holiday? Here's an easy treat you will just LOVE! I had some of my nieces and nephews over one night and we all got the craving for brownies. I had a bunch of mini candybars so we combined the two and had the yummiest brownies ever! Here's what you need:
*Brownie mix (and everything needed listed on the box: ie: oil, eggs, water, etc.)
*Your favorite mini candybars (if you have large candybars, just cut them up)

Here's what you do:
Follow the directions on the box of brownies. Pour the batter into the desired pan. Before placing the pan in the preheated oven, place your candybars around in the batter. Bake according to box directions. YUM-O-LICIOUS!

Microwave Cake in a Mug

Thanks so much to our reader Deeann for this fun, yummy and easy, easy, easy recipe! I've seen this floating on the internet and armed with Deeann's recipe I gave it a try with yummy results!
I think this would even be fun for April Fool's day served as Hot Chocolate Cake!Here's what you need:
4 tbsp. flour
4 tbsp. sugar
2 tbsp. cocoa
1 egg
3 tbsp. milk
3 tbsp. oil
3 tbsp. chocolate chips
splash vanilla
1 coffee mug

Here's what you do:
Add dry ingredients to the mug, mix well.
Add the egg and mix well.
Pour in the milk and oil, mix well.
Add the chocolate chips and vanilla, mix well.

Put the mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug. Allow to cool. Enjoy!

Spring Cupcakes

We had so much fun making these cupcakes! They're so cute and easy to make!Here's what you need: unfrosted cupcakes, frosting, large marshmallows, gumdrops, sprinkles




Here's what you do:
Cut a large marshmallow in about 4 pieces (easiest with scissors), flatten out a bit and dip in sugar sprinkles then set aside. Frost the cupcake then arrange the marshmallow petals and gumdrop to look like a flower. You can flatten and cut green gumdrops and cut to look like leaves and add to the flower.

Dino Dig Cupcakes!

These were such at HIT at preschool I just had to do them with my nieces and nephews! What kid doesn't just love Dinosaurs? With this snack kids can be a paleontologist! They dig the dinosaur out of the 'dirt' and eat the dirt while they're at it!













Here's what you need: 1 cake mix (and ingredients), clean small dinosaurs







Here's what you do:
Make the cake mix according to the directions. Grease the muffin tin with butter and flour. Pour a bit of batter into the muffin tin. Place a dinosaur in each muffin tin and cover with batter. Bake according to directions. Give each child 2 small wooden craft sticks to dig out their dinosaur and eat the cake!

 *WARNING*  You need to make sure the dinosaur 

toys you use are safe to use!  I did! :)

Sweet Snowman!

January is a great time to have a snow/ski/sledding party - so why not add a sweet snowman treat to the menu ... and by sweet - I MEAN SWEET! Just give kids all of the pieces and they'll love building this snowman. And please don't forget that kids are so creative! If they don't do it like you expect or just like the picture ... that's more than okay! Go creative crazy!
Here's what you need: Hostess Snow ball, m&m's, mike&ikes, raisinets, hersheys chocolate candy bar, reeses peanut butter cups.









Here's what you do:
Just give all of the kids the pieces and tell them to make a snowman - they'll know what to do. You can even give them a picture to look at if you want them to practice their matching skills!

Frosty the Cupcake

Here's what you need: Cupcakes (made & cooled), white/vanilla frosting, chocolate chips, m&m's and candy corn.



Here's what you do:
Scoop frosting into a ziploc bag, seal the bag and cut the corner off one end. Squeeze a good amount of frosting onto each cupcake. Decorate with eyes (m&m's), carrot nose (candy corn) and mouth (up-side-down chocolate chips). Get creative and use other items too!

Easy Cheesie-Cakes

Talk about Easy - try these easy mini cheesecakes dainty and pretty enough for a princess!

Here's what you need:Jell-o no bake cheesecake, muffin liners, (optional: pie filling)






Here's what you do:
Follow the directions to make the mini-cheesecakes on the back of the box. But if the instructions aren't there just follow the directions for the pie but place a tablespoon or so of the crust mix into each muffin cup liner and then add the cheesecake mix up to the top of the liner or almost to the top. Refrigerate to set. Each box makes about 30-35.

Alternate: I have seen a Wal-Mart off brand of no bake cheesecake that doesn't include a graham cracker crust. If you use this or have your own no bake recipe you'd like to use, then a super easy crust is to just pop a nilla wafer in the bottom of each muffin liner.

Spider Web Sugar Cookies

Here's what you'll need: sugar cookies (made), frosting, black icing and toothpics





Here's what you do:
Frost the cookie with the vanilla frosting, and with the black icing make a dot in the middle and circles around it (like a target) with each circle getting bigger and going around the next. Then take a toothpic, start in the center dot and drag it out to the edge of the cookie, repeat all around the cookie until it looks like the picture above.

VARIATIONS: can be used on a large cake or small cupcakes. I remember as a kid my mom did that on a large cake and put a ding dong spider on top. It was so cute!