Strawberries N Cream Pudding Cookies

Here's my Pinterest board for food.

And the next recipe I followed was for Strawberries N Cream Pudding Cookies.

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter softened
• 2 TB strawberry jello
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 3.5 oz. box white chocolate pudding package instant
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 bag white chocolate chips 

 

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Cream butter, sugar and jello together. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.
3. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, pudding mix, baking soda and salt. Slowly add to butter mixture. Mix well. Add vanilla.
4. Stir in white chocolate chips.
5. Spoon onto a greased baking sheet. Bake for 9-11 minutes. ENJOY!

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I didn't take any pictures of the process and I did have to tweak the recipe a bit right away because the commissary didn't sell white chocolate pudding, but all in all, the cookies came out pretty good.

I've decided that I want to combine other pudding/jello combo's and I have yet to do it a second time, but I do have a bag of puddings and jello's waiting for me to try again.

I also figured out that I have to become friends with my neighbors in my building or the Fourres will became very round.

Teach Your Children Well - Noodles, DIY puzzle, Popsicle Stick Shapes

Other ways that I have been entertaining Violet (and teaching her fine motor skills) was to use anything you can find around the house. Well, maybe not popsicle sticks, unless you eat a lot of popsicles, but that is a perfect challenge for hot, summer days.

Noodles
Finding big tubular, pasta noodles, like ziti, is easy enough and as is finding yarn. Here's what I didn't realize right away - yarn is uncooperative.

Upon my mother's suggestion, I got shoelaces. Luckily, there is a store for military gear at the BX, so I was able to get very long and sturdy shoelaces that wouldn't get mixed up with Scott's uniform. I also threw in a couple of short Solo cups (clear), an empty tissue box and one of my espresso cups for Violet to play and transfer the noodles. She loves it. She even is enthusiastic about clean-up because she gets to hold the zip-lock baggie and control the situation.

DIY Puzzles
This was the simplest activity to do. All you have to do is take a cereal box, cut it into how ever many pieces or shapes you think your kid can handle and, VOILA! got yourself a simple puzzle. I used 4 different boxes and I made sure to label the backs of the cardboard just so I can set out one puzzle at a time and not confuse Violet. We're still working on this and I found that it's easiest to take a cell phone pic of the 'finished' puzzle for her to work off of.

Popsicle Stick Shapes
This is also a very simple project. Make simple shapes, ie. triangle, rectangle, diamond and square, out of popsicle sticks, trace them onto a piece of construction paper, and allow your kid to place the sticks on top of the traced lines to learn shapes. The extra step I took was to then put the construction paper in a page protector so that I can keep a lot of the loose papers in a three-ring binder for easy access. This also keeps Violet from ripping up the paper, just in case the destructive mood strikes her.

Teach your children well - Clay

In the past several months, I have been very motivated to actually implement the activities I pin on my Pinterest board for contructive kid play. There are friends of mine who are out there who have asked to be included in what I discover works. So, I'll try to keep track of Violet (and my) progress on the blog. I'll try to add as many personal pictures of either making each project or action shots of Violet playing with it, as well as the links of where I got the ideas just in case anyone wants to explore any of the sites I stumble upon.

The first activity I'll post is about clay. Yes, you can purchase Play-Doh and skip the whole process of making your own clay. Your arms and upper back may thank you. However, I HATE the smell of Play-Doh - I'm not even sure why. So, when I found a recipe for clay AND the fact that, miracle of all miracles, the commissary actually carries the gel food coloring, I forged ahead and made clay, like my mother did for us.

The major difference between the clay my Mom made and this clay recipe was that it didn't leave the hands grainy or tasting like a salt lick. That was a nice discovery. Here's the recipe:

Make clay
Ingredients:

1 cup water

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup flour
1/4 cup salt
2 tbsp cream of tartar
gel food coloring
*I used Wilton brand in Rose, Orange, Lemon Yellow, Leaf Green, Sky Blue, and Violet

Directions:

1. Pour the water and vegetable oil in a saucepan. Add in the flour, salt, cream of tarter and a teaspoon or two of gel food coloring. Lightly stir together to combine.
   *The dough will end up being about the same color that it is now, so add more food coloring now if you want the color to be richer/brighter.
2. Cook the mixture over medium heat, stirring constantly. It should be done in about 4-5 minutes. Because you might panic and think you've ruined it, here is a breakdown of what it looks like throughout the cooking process:
   • Minute 1: The mixture will combine, and look smooth and beautiful!
   • Minute 2: You'll start to get chunks. Make sure to keep scraping the bottom and edges of the pan to prevent any pieces from burning.
   • Minute 3: This is where you might begin to worry that you've messed it up. Looks like a clumpy mess. Don't panic! Just keep stirring!!
   • Minute 4: The dough will start to form into a ball. You'll know when it's ready when it's not sticky and pulls away from the pan. You can test by pressing the dough with your fingers. It will be hot!
3. Remove the dough from the pan and place on a plate to cool.
4. Once cool, knead the dough. This can be done by you or little helpers!
5. To store, wrap the dough in plastic wrap and place in a sealed container.
   *I purchased a couple of 5-pack Rubbermaid TakeAlongs® containers (17 oz) at WalMart and the dough fits perfectly!

A few notes:

• Each batch makes about 2 cups of dough. You need to make a new batch for each color. It took me less than an hour to make all 6 batches.
• Surprisingly, the food coloring doesn't come off on your hands at all.
• The dough is safe to eat, but it is disgusting!
• Buy more cream of tartar than you think you'll need. I got 2 1/2 batches from one 1.5 oz container.
• Regular liquid food coloring will also work, but I think the gel makes the color a little more vibrant. Liquid food coloring may also come off on your hands

And some of my own pictures:

This was just the right size for storage

 All together, I made 6 colors: red, blue, yellow, green, orange and purple. The green was the easiest secondary color to make since there was a green food coloring tube already. I just added a bit more blue to make it a tad more vibrant. The orange was a bit tough, but I think it turned out alright and the purple was hardest of all. Mixing your own coloring helps insert your own creativity in the process, which I really liked.

So far, it's a pretty big hit and I figure if the clay dries out or the something odd happens to the clay (I'm always a little worried about things molding in this humidity), Violet will just be more and more useful as a helper in the making of her own toys.

Also, a helpful tip: if you have carpeting like I do, using a shower curtain as a drop cloth is the cheapest solution I can come up with to avoid any bits of clay being flung (accidentally or otherwise) and ground into the carpet.