Marshmallow fondandt -OR- playdough for mommies ;-)

This post has been written for a while - I just did not have time to finish it up ... But here it is finally and there are a few more posts to come as soon as I get time to write them up.

Again - playing around and trying stuff for my daughter's birthday. She wanted to have a Winnie Pooh cake ... oh well ... So I thought I would have to make fondant. I have worked with fondant a few times before. Usually my husband made it - hard work with all the kneading! This time I really wanted to make so-called marshmallow fondant. I have read about it alot and finally wanted to give it a try. I used this recipe (sorry, this is german). All you need is marshmallows, powdered sugar and water. I was really curious whether this would work.
Here a few pages with recipes in english:
There is a MM fondant photo tutorial by Peggy Weaver and another tutorial by Cake Journal and still another by The frosted cake'n cookie. There are probably many more tutorials on the web if you google.

I have to say I really liked the marshmallow fondant. It was rather easy to make and does not need any complicated ingredients. It turned out well! Although my husband had to step in again - again lots of kneading! Good workout! :-)

I made some cute toppers and used these tutorial
cupcakes
hearts
cake slices

But to be honest - I just used the tutorials kinda like an idea. I don't own all those special tools - I just used my hands, a knife, a wooden skewer. In the end you just work with it like you would with playdough - that's it! :-) There are many more ideas for toppers here. So cute! :-)

After I kinda got a feel for it I made a Winnie Pooh and bees and honey pots and snails and flowers and ... oh well ... you'll see ...
Here's a little teaser ... :-)

Playdough

If you ever want to make playdough - use this recipe from the blog My Montessori Journey. (There are even some really neat ideas for montly themed playdough!) I made this dough today and it turned out BEAUTIFUL!!! (And it was REALLY quick, too!) I have only made playdough once before - Chocolate playdough. I really liked the chocoalte one - but this one is even better. Well, of course it does not smell as good as chocolate. But it is so smooth and - which I like best - NOT STICKY AT ALL!!! Really great. I am very curious to see how it will keep up when stored for a while.
I tried the recipe simply with red food colouring (my daughter chose) and gold glitter. (You have to look really close to see the glitter in the photo.)


I am not the "glittery type of person" usually. But I wanted to make glittery playdough as part of a "treasure" for my daugher's birthday treasure hunt. I think it turned out well ... Am not too sure yet whether I will make the playdough for the birthday party in yellow with glitter or in different colours with glitter ... But at least I know now which recipe I will use!

Teddy bear cookies

Today my daughter and I baked these cute teddy bears. The recipe is from this site. (You have to scroll down on this page until you find the teddies. When you found them you gotta scroll down a bit more to get the english instruction.)
I plan to make these for her birthday party in July. But I wanted to try them first so there would not be any bad surprises. And I am actually very pleased with the result! To make the bears was quite simple. It is a bit time consuming to put all the little dough balls together so I know now that it will take some time. But the good thing is that the bears are really easy to make. All you need to do is roll the dough into different sized balls. Even my daughter can do that (she does it with play dough all the time) and she was actually a big help!
After we had made ten bears I lost patience and smashed the rest of the dough together to make it "marbled" looking and used some cookie cutters.


And we also had to check the taste. ;-) I have to say I usually don't like rather dry and crispy cookies too much. I am more a "chewy-cookie"-kinda person. But even though these are not chewy at all they taste very good. Especially the chocolate bits! :-)

Funny thing was that my daughter actually seemed to like the tea pots more than the bears! She kept requesting more tea pots to eat for tea. Weird little child! Maybe she just wanted to save the bears... ?

Lamingtons

We made these cuties today. Well, actually I made the cake yesterday evening and let it rest overnight in the fridge. (It's supposed to make the frosting easier.)

(Just in case you are wondering ... lamingtons are supposed to be covered in coconut all around. The one on the lower left side of the photo was a special request by my daughter. She did not want coconut on top. So that's what mami did.)

I have had quite a few lamingtons when I was in Australia. First time I saw them I thought that they look really boring. But to my surprise they tasted really nice. I have not had lamingtons since I left Australia - which was about 9 years ago!!! (Wow, I'm just realizing that I'm getting old.) I always wanted to try to make some ... but never got around to it. But when I saw this post on Cake journal I thought I HAVE to try them. NOW! (By the way, the whole blog is worth reading. There are so many nice pictures and cute tutorials!)
The recipe I - and Cake journal - usesd is from joyofbaking.com. And I think it turned out really well for a first try. The cake itself was a bit dense for my taste. I think I simply left it a bit too long in the oven - so I will watch it more closely next time.

But the frosting - YUMMY!!!!

Tiny booties

Completely forgot to show what I made before our vacation. Here they are. Aren't they cute. I did not add the buttons yet since I was not sure how tight they should close. I will add them when the baby is here and can wear them.
They were my first try so I am very pleased that it worked out. However, I think with more solid colours they would look even cuter ... Might try that next time.

Our vacation

So we are back now already for a week. But I didn't find any time to sort through all the pictures up until now ... So here are finally a few impressions from our trip to the east sea.
Our dog was very sceptical about the whole thing ... she is not too keen on "being away from home". She loves the water though! Unfortunately she can't swim. Yes, apparently there are dogs that cannot do that and also do not learn it. The very scary part is - the fact that she cannot swim does not really bother her very much. She still would run into the water like a maniac - not checking whether it gets very deep very quickly! So we only let her into the water with a lead. Last year at the north sea I made the mistake to let her run free - and I actually was totally freaked cause I thought she will drown or I will have to go after her ...



The weather was not totally hot but my daughter still went into the water and had so much fun!


We also went for walks ....



On one of our walks we passed a field with cows. They were scattered all over the field - but when we passed they all came to the fence and lined up! I have never seen cows that do that and found it so funny. (Of course our dog was very excited, too. She always thinks every animal wants to play with her ... she's a bit strange that way ...)


Can you guess what the two in the pictures below are doing?
(And no, the one with the long hair is not me! It's my husband.)



Yes, flying a kite! My daughter loves her bee-kite. (And I think my husband loves it just as much.)






We saw many very beautiful sunsets.


After we arrived back home we had to unpack the car and stuff. Usually our dog is quite lively and runs around and is always in the way ... But no dog around ... Very strange! It was very quiet in the apartment so I went searching for her ....

and found her fast asleep! She really was totally exhausted!

Guests in our garden

One day I was sitting in our garden and was wondering why there was a bird flying to and from the only tree in our garden all the time .... When we checked we found a nest. A couple of days later the bird was sitting in it ...

And when she went out for food we could actually get a glimpse of what she was sitting on ...


The evening before we went on our vacation we saw that two birds had hatched.


The next morning the other two had hatched, too. (Sorry, the photos are not the best. But it's not easy to take a picture in the middle of a dark tree without a flash ...)

My daughter was very excited to follow all this ... and we were hoping that the birds would not learn to fly and be gone within the week that we would be away. When we came back from the holidays first thing was to check the nest. It was empty! We were a bit sad, since we really had hoped that we would see the little birds - maybe even see how they learn to fly. But obviously they were gone.

The next day (we had returned the day before in the evening) we were sitting in our living room and looking out into the garden we saw this:
The mom and dad bird were looking for food and the little ones were hopping around in the grass and following them and trying to get the best bits. It was so cute! So they were not gone completely. They just did not use the nest anymore.