Nativity Lunch

Over at Muffin Tin Monday today, the theme is Christmas Stories. I decided to tell the ultimate Christmas story today with our Muffin Tin Meal... The Nativity! :-)


My daughter loved it, and actually completely refused to eat baby Jesus ;-).

In My Tin:

Mary, Jesus, and Joseph- All made from pigs in a blanket with dotted eyes made from colored decorating gel.

3 Kings, symbolized by 3 crowns of cheese toast and an animal cracker camel.

An angel cut from cheese with a cookie cutter.

2 animal cracker sheep to stand for the shepherds.

To make the muffin tin look like a stable, I topped it with 2 pretzel rods and a the star of Bethlehem, cut from another piece of cheese.


I think some of this would be cute food for children Christmas parties. I wish I had had time to make the angel a beautiful sugar cookie, but you can only do what you can do, right? I thought it would have also been cool to have a little candy cane in the shepherd's cup. Can't wait to see everyone else's creations! :-)

Princess Food

Today's Muffin Tin Monday didn't have a theme, so I made my daughter a princess muffin tin!



In the Tin:

• Sleeping Beauty's Spinning Wheel Pasta
• A Princess crown (Bread with melted cheese and pepperoni "jewels")
• Cinderella's glass slipper (made from a blue jello jiggler)
• Peas (for the princess and the pea)
• Snow White's Poisoned Apple (Apple dripped in melted white chocolate chips with green food coloring and a string tied on for where the witch dipped it)
  
• Cinderella's "Pumpkin" carriage (made from a pumpkin pancake with candy wheels.)

Accompanied by...

• Magic Wand (more melted cheese on bread stuck to a pretzel rod with peanut butter)
• Magic Potion (Sparkling Juice in a fun bottle)

I wish I would have had the time to make Cinderella's pumpkin carriage out of these pumpkin pie bites from Bakerella. Wouldn't that be adorable?! I would give them blueberry wheels. Maybe I'll use that idea for my daughter's Princess Birthday Party coming up in February.

Can't wait to see what everyone else has in their tin this week! :-)

Other Princess-Related Tins:

Tea Party Tin

Mermaid Muffin Tin

Eye Candy... er, Cupcakes

If anyone is looking for good ideas for an All Saint's Day Party, I guess posted over at Catholic Cuisine about my St. Lucy eyeball cupcakes! Check out the post here! There are a lot of really cute Catholic food ideas over there, so if you're Catholic, you need to bookmark this site! :-)

You could also follow my directions and just make regular eyeball cupcakes for a Halloween party as well. 

More all Saint's Day party ideas to come ;-) Just out of curiosity, do I have any Catholic readers? 

St. Lucy Cupcakes

Cute Apple Displays

We're all overflowing with apples this time of year, right? Why not have some fun?! Here are some cute ideas of things I've done with our apples:

Serve you apples sliced up with a caramel fountain. I got this "chocolate fountain" at Goodwill (new in the box) for $4! I just thinned the caramel with some hot water to get it to run through. Remember to toss your apple slices in some lemon juice to prevent browning.

Try making (or in this case buying) some caramel apples and displaying them on a cupcake holder. I also got my cupcake holder new in the box at Goodwill. Ya, I used to live across the street from Goodwill :-) Everyone at my Fall Potluck this year was really impressed with this!

How about serving apple sauce in... apples! Aren't these little apple bowls just too adorable? It was time consuming, but totally worth it. You basically just scoop out the middle as best as you can with a spoon, rub with a little lemon juice, and fill with applesauce. I did make applesauce out of what came from the apples, but I had to supplement with some canned stuff as well. I think it's cute to keep the tops and put them back on like little "hats" :-)


This idea just came to me. The apples in our kitchen are currently displayed on my cupcake holder. It's a really cute way to display them, and I may as well get as much use out of that cupcake holder as possible, right? :-)

Hope someone was looking for some cute fall food ideas for all the parties you guys have been throwing ;-)

Also, Family Fun has a great list of cute things to do with apples! If you haven't checked it out, you really should!

The Masked Mommy's Fun Food

Throw on this extra cape and come with me! We're going to fly around my blog and see all my cute food posts! I'll bet we can do this faster than a speeding bullet. Click the links for full instructions on each project, and let me know if you need any help flying. Lets go!

{Jello Firefighter Hat "Cake"}

{Under the Sea Muffin Tin with Mermaid}

{Tea Party Cupcake Birthday Cakes}
{Very Hungry Caterpillar Muffin Tin Meal}
{Cake Pops and Marshmallow Pops}
{4th of July Cake Pops, Eagle Style}
{4th of July Muffin Tin Meal with Eagle}
{Little Nutbrown Hare and Little Nutbrown Hare Meals}
{Butter Cookies with Spice Drops}

{Tea Party Muffin Tin Meal}

{Princess Muffin Tin Meal}

Hope you found these ideas useful for an upcoming birthday party or something. No? Well, whatever. Hope you had fun on your flying lesson ;-)

Firefighter Celebration!

My husband has been in fire school for the past 9 months or so, and he has finally graduated!!! :-D Yay!!!

I wanted to make him a "Congratulations" cake, so the cogs in my head started to turn. I googled "fire cake" and found some cute stuff, but I wasn't sure how adventurous I was feeling. I was staring at my daughter's play fire hat, and then it hit me... JELLO MOLD!


This was VERY easy to make. This would also make a perfect "cake" for a firefighter birthday party!

How to Make Your Own Firefighter Hat Jello Cake:

1. Trace around the brim of your play fire hat on some cardboard before starting. This will be the brim of your hat. Either paint desired color, or cover in colored paper. Then, cover this in saran wrap and set it to the side.
2. Rub the inside of the hat with vegetable oil, and balance in a bowl to hold it upside down. I used paper towels to hold it steady.
3. Mix either yellow or red jello, and be sure to use a "jiggler" recipe so the jello is firm enough to hold it's shape.
4. Pour the jello into the hat and refrigerate until firm.
5. When the jello has firmed, run a butter knife around the edge to help loosen and turn the jello mold onto your piece of prepared cardboard.
6. Decorate with fruit roll up "reflector strips" and/or paint directly on the jello with a soft paint brush and red food coloring.

I think it would have been even cuter in red, but my husband was moving up from his red hat to his yellow hat, so it seemed fitting to make the hat yellow ;-)



Congratulations to The Masked Husband for earning his yellow fire hat! The Masked Family is very proud of you!

Muffin Tin Monday ~ Tea Party!

The theme for Muffin Tin Monday today is Party/Celebrate, so we had a tea party! It was a huge hit with my daughter. I mean, what little girl doesn't love a tea party?

In the "Tin":

Sugar cubes, a tea bag, an empty tea cup with a spoon, flower shaped toast with strawberry cream cheese, an apricot, banana slices, and a flower shaped turkey and cheese sandwich. Don't forget the teapot!


The sugar cubes were a HUGE hit. Lol! I would have loved to have something fancy like cucumber sandwiches or something, but what can I say? I opted for "easy" ;-)

Needless to say, the Masked Daughter was thrilled!

Here are some other things I've done in the past that I think would be cute for a tea party:

Tea Party Cupcakes

Butter Spice Drop Cookies

Don't forget to head on over to Michelle's blog to see what others are celebrating today with their party muffin tins! :-)

Muffin Tin Monday- Big/Little Theme

Happy Monday! It's that time again, and this week over at Muffin Tin Monday, Michelle has challenged us with a "big/little" theme. At first this really threw me. Was I supposed to build an elephant out of bologna? I just wasn't sure. That's when it hit me... a regular muffin tin vs. a mini muffin tin! :-)


Wow. The more I look at that picture, the more it makes me feel like it's a camera trick. Lol!

Also, my daughter has been obsessed with the "Guess How Much I Love You" book lately (she thinks she's a bunny), so the big one is for Big Nutbrown Hare, and the little one is for Little Nutbrown Hare. Check it out!

In the Tin:

• "The Moon" (made from a sideways slice of a hard boiled egg white) for the "I love you to the moon and back" page.
• "Branches" (aka pretzel sticks) from when Big Nutbrown Hare hops so high his ears touch the branches above.
• A heart (cut from a watermelon) for the Guess How Much I Love You thing.
• Then a strawberry, salad, and carrots for "bunny food" :-)

My daughter had such a good time with this meal! She hopped all over the place while eating her carrots, and we read the book while we ate. The big muffin tin meal was for her (she is 3) and I gave the little one to my little guy (15 months). This only worked because my son is too young to have the she-got-more-than-me syndrome (and even he wanted some of his sister's strawberry after eating his tiny one. Lol!)

Great theme everyone! I had fun! Go by Michelle's blog to see what others did for their big/little muffin tins this week. Also, you guys know about the Nester's linky party today, right? You can check out my post for that here. 2 posts in one day? Not too much to ask for a superhero I suppose. I just couldn't resist linking up at both places ;-)

American Muffin Tin Meal

Today's Muffin Tin Monday theme is "4th of July". I wanted our food to be a little more than just red white & blue. I wanted our muffin tin meal to be patriotic, and include some history. Here's what I came up with:


Clockwise: Tortilla with strawberry jelly, blue yogurt with white flower sprinkles, eagle shaped cheese quesadilla with cheddar cheese beak and raisin eye, cherries, and mulberry pie.

The cherries are symbolic of George Washington (with the whole chopping down the cherry tree thing) and we drank tea as a symbol of the Boston tea party.

The eagle head was really easy to make. Just fold a tortilla in half, and then cut out a "ghost" shape with some scissors. It cuts very nicely with scissors. Then, put some cheese in the middle and microwave (or fry it if you're a little more ambitious than me, or if you're preparing it for adults). Finish off by cutting the beak shape out of a slice of cheddar cheese, and stick a raisin on there for an eye :-D

For dessert, we also had one of my eagle pops.

See my post with directions on how to make these here. Also, check out my preschool 4th of July craft idea here :-)

Check back later this week to get my awesome mulberry pie recipe! Go here to see the other participants in today's muffin tin Monday over at Michelle's blog. I can't wait to see what everyone else came up with! :-)

4th of July Eagle Pops

I'm sure everyone in blogland knows about Bakerella and her famous cake pops by now, right? Well, I made a 4th of July version of bald eagles inspired by her Easter chicken pops. Check it out!


I was trying to come up with some ideas for my 4th of July Muffin Tin Monday when I realized most of the 4th of July food out there is just red white & blue. I couldn't really find anything that actually looked like something "American" other than flags. What's up with that? What if all Halloween food was orange, but never shaped like pumpkins? Silliness!

If you want to make your own bald eagle dessert, here's what you'll need:

Lollipop Sticks
Large Marshmallows (or you can be traditional and make real cake pops)
Dark Chocolate Chips
White Gumdrops
Shredded Coconut
Almond Bark
Black Food Color Paste
Flower Shaped Sprinkles

Here's what you do:

For the Body~
Put your large marshmallow (or cake pop ball) on the stick and cover in melted dark chocolate. Stick on 2 yellow flower-shaped sprinkles for his feet, and chocolate chips for the wings. Allow to cool. Use a blob of melted almond bark to stick on shredded coconut for the eagle's tail.

For the Head~
Melt your dark chocolate and almond bark until smooth. Dip the bottom of your white gumdrop into the melted almond bark, then dip into your shredded coconut to make the "feathers" on his neck. Cut a slit where his beak goes, and insert a sideways yellow flower-shaped sprinkle. For the eyes, make 2 dots with black food color paste using a dull toothpick (as a substitute for one of those awesome food markers).

Join the head to the body using melted chocolate like glue.

I made the Eagle head pops first, but didn't like them. Someone should submit these to cakewrecks! Lol!


Hope someone out there was looking for a unique eagle dessert to serve all your 4th of July guests!

Muffin Tin Monday- Very Hungry Caterpillar Style!

At Michele's Muffin Tin Monday this week, the theme is to base your muffin tin lunch on a children's book. With all the caterpillars around our townhouse this week, The Very Hungry Caterpillar seemed like an obvious choice. Caterpillars appear to be raining down from above. They cover our sidewalk. They consume our front steps. I think it's gross, but my daughter is enchanted...


I tried to base it on the book as close as possible, but it came down to going with the flow of what was in my fridge. However, we were able to start with apples and end on a leaf- just like in the book! :-)


At our house, the very hungry caterpillar ate some apples, blackberries, strawberries, cheese, cake, hot dogs, pie, cantaloupe, celery, and pickles... but he was still hungry. So he ate his way through a lettuce leaf as well ;-)

It went a little differently in the book, but I don't think my 3 year old noticed! Lol!

I did all my hole-pokin' with a straw. It worked really well!

Wouldn't this be a great idea for a Very Hungry Caterpillar party? Just poke holes in whatever food you serve, and voila! Instant Very Hungry Caterpillar food! :-)

If you missed my "Under the Sea" muffin tin a few weeks ago, check it out!