Wake up. Feed/change the baby. Get the girls dressed. Get everyone's teeth brushed. Make them breakfast. Get myself a banana & make a quick espresso if I actually have time. Pack them in the car to get 1 of 3 of them to school on any given day during the week (the girl's have preschool on different days). That is our typical morning routine.
...But not during the few days we had of Spring/Easter break!...
We hung out in our pjs just a little bit longer. Let the morning go by a little before we got ourselves together. Played outside ALOT more. Rode bikes. Took walks to the park. Did yard work. Dyed eggs. Baked more than usual and spent more quality time together.
It was p e r f e c t.
When the girls have off from school, I always like to do something extra fun with them together. They both love to bake and are pretty good making that type of activity last a little bit so that's what we did! With that being said, I thought cake pops would be something a little different that our usual and fun! I found a simple recipe on Pinterest, and ran to the grocery store with Brynley to buy boxed cake mix and a container of icing. Brynley chose Strawberry (because it was Pink), but I personally thought the flavor was too sweet and would have chosen Vanilla or Chocolate if it was my choice.
The recipe said to bake cake as directed on the box. After the cake cooks and cools, crumble it up in a large bowl and add two tablespoons of icing and mix all together. The icing makes the cake pops less crumbly and more moist. Just a little does the trick- don't add more than 1-2 tablespoons or the cake mixture will be gooey!
In our house, we like to put sprinkles on e v e r y t h i n g. Naturally, the girls wanted to add multiple different types on sprinkles to the batter, so I gave them the bottles of sprinkles and they went to town. It looked so pretty and very Easter-like...they thought it was so fun to add some exta festive flare : )
Once the batter is mixed, roll in small balls and place in the freezer for 20 minutes. In the meantime, melt some melting chocolate, we chose White Chocolate, and grab some lollipop sticks. When the cake balls are ready, dip the end of the lollipop stick in the chocolate and stick it in the cake ball...this will help keep the stick inserted. Then, dip the pop in the melting chocolate and adorn with sprinkles!
We used a styrofoam block to stick the pops in until the chocolate was set. It works perfectly and can be reused over and over again. You can even wrap the block in tissue paper or pretty wrapping paper afterwards and use as a display for your yummy cake pops!
It was such a fun activity for the girls and they really were excited to see the finished product. We were able to get about 18 balls from the mix (we made them a decent size), but I think you could get 2 dozen if the balls are a little smaller.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Spring/Easter break and were able to gets lots of extra family time in!!
xo Lauren