Buddy loves to cook, and I’m always looking for fun, new recipes to try with him. This year, my husband requested a Chocolate Chip Calzone for his birthday instead of cake. It is a favorite dessert of ours, which used to be made in the Claimjumper Restaurant. I used this recipe to make the calzone.
To make the chocolate chip calzone, you need:
A can of pizza dough
White chocolate chips
Milk chocolate chips
Vanilla ice cream
Chocolate syrup
Whipped cream
We pulled out a can of pizza dough, white chocolate chips, and chocolate chips. Buddy and I unrolled the dough on a pastry mat. Then I had Buddy add a handful of chocolate chips in a line, and then he rolled the dough a bit. Then we added white chocolate chips and rolled the dough some more. We did this a few more times until we had rolled up the whole piece of dough.
I put the chocolate chip calzone on a greased baking sheet and then baked it at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, once it started getting a little brown. Then I sliced it into 6 slices and topped it with vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream. It is so gooey and delicious, and so easy to make! It’s a hit in our household, and I hope we have it again soon.
Buddy and I are home for spring break, and I’ve been looking for fun ways to help him work on his reading and writing. He particularly needs to work on writing lowercase letters. So after doing a regular Easter egg hunt with him, I realized how we could work on his literacy skills while having fun at the same time.
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We started by pulling out some magnetic letters and putting them into empty Easter eggs. Then I hid the eggs around the house. Buddy had a great time looking around our house for the eggs.
I had suggested that we write down the letters we found, but Buddy had the idea to make words with them first. So we decided to open all of the eggs up, pull out the letters, and then make a word. Then we recorded the words on a piece of paper.
I could have limited Buddy to using sight words or specific words that he’s been doing in school. But I let him do whatever he wanted, since my main focus was just getting him to work on his hand writing. So of course, his first word was t-rex. We did take some time to form magic e words to practice a skill from school.
If you have a younger child at your house, you could always do this the way we did a few years ago when Buddy was 3. We just found the letters and matched them up to letters written on a cake pan. You can read more about that activity here.
We had a lot of fun doing our Easter egg hunt, and I’m so happy Buddy was willing to work on his handwriting. I know we’ll be doing this again at least once before the end of break.
Buddy and I have been on a Disney kick lately. So far this summer we have done a virtual Disney World twice, built Disney parade floats, and made Mickey Pretzels. And a couple of weeks ago, we tried to make another Disney inspired food: Dole Whip Popsicles.
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The recipe we used was originally made by Today’s Creative Life. To make Dole Whip popsicles, you need an 8 ounce container of Cool Whip, a 20 ounce can of crushed pineapple, lime juice, and 2 tablespoons of sugar.
It was very easy to make the popsicles. We combined the Cool Whip, crushed pineapple, lime juice, and sugar in the blender. Buddy had a great time pushing the buttons to turn the blender on and the different speed levels. You want to keep going until everything is well mixed and the mixture is smooth. Then you pour the mixture into popsicle molds and put in the freezer.
The original recipe said to freeze 2-4 hours, but we found that wasn’t nearly enough. We had better results when we let the popsicles freeze overnight. While they weren’t quite as good as the original Dole Whip, the taste was very similar and everyone in my family really enjoyed them. We will definitely be making these Dole Whip Popsicles again.
This summer, Buddy and I have been doing What’s Cooking Wednesdays. He loves to cook, and it’s fun to have an excuse to find kitchen activities for him. Buddy has been asking to do Disney activities a lot recently, so I decided to make Mickey pretzels with him. It is a favorite snack of ours when we are in Disney World, and we were both excited to try it at home.
I got my inspiration from Smart School House’s blog. She uses a can of pretzel dough. I have seen other people use canned pizza dough for pretzels. I didn’t have either of those on hand, though, so I used the hot buttered pretzel recipe from King Arthur Flour. While it was a little more work to make our own dough, it wasn’t too difficult and they were amazingly delicious at the end.
We made the dough by combining 2 1/2 cups bread flour, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sugar, 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast, and 1 cup warm water in our mixer. Then we put in a greased bowl and covered with a light towel. The recipe calls for the dough to rise for 30 minutes, but we left it for an hour while Buddy napped.
When we returned to the dough, we split it into 6 equal sized pieces and rolled each into a long log. Our final pretzels were about the size of a dinner plate, so you could do more than 6 parts if you want smaller pretzels. After we made our logs we turned one into a circle to be a Mickey head. Then we split another one to be the two ears.
Next, we put 2 tablespoons of baking soda in 1 cup of boiling water and put it into a 13 x 9 baking pan. You are supposed to let the water cool a bit before dipping the pretzels. We dipped each pretzel into the mixture, and I used a spoon to bath the top part of the pretzel for 2 minutes. Then they went on the baking pan.
We baked the pretzels for 9 minutes at 475 degrees. They came out perfectly done. Then we brushed on 3 tablespoons of melted butter and put kosher salt on two. My husband dipped his in a cinnamon sugar mixture instead.
Our Mickey pretzels were even better than the ones in the parks! And the taste was very, very similar to the ones we get in the mall. We loved them and will be making more pretzels with this recipe in the future.
Buddy and I love Disney World, and we’ve been missing the parks lately. We were supposed to go in June, but that trip was canceled. Instead, we’ve been busy doing Disney activities at home. (Read about our virtual Disney World here.)
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A friend of mine posted about doing her own Disney at home trip, and one of her activities was building parade floats out of Duplos. I knew Buddy would love it, so I wanted to try it.
Buddy’s been to Disney World twice, but we’ve never watched a parade there together. So before we built our floats, we watched a Disney parade on You Tube. (This is the one we watched, which is a parade from Disneyland.)
Once we had our inspiration it was time to build. Buddy and I searched through his Duplos to find as many wheels as we could. Then we went to build fun and inventive parade floats to carry different characters. We had to do some trial and error to find ways to make the float base large enough to carry the characters and still balance on the wheels. We also had the challenge of getting his Disney characters to stand while the float was moving since they weren’t Duplo blocks.
After we were done, Buddy and I put on some Disney music and made our floats go around his room and into the next room. We had such a blast doing this activity, that the following day Buddy wanted to make more floats before we did anything else. He loves the ones we made, and a week later there are still a few on his shelves that he can bear to put away. It was such a fun and easy activity, and I’m so glad we tried it.
My family has had a crazy spring with everything shut down and trying to do remote learning at home. We’ve also traveled a little bit once summer started. Now that we’re home and school is over, we’ve finally got some time to try some new activities.
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When we were on vacation, our cottage had access to a beach filled with stones. Of course, quite a few of them came home with us, so I had the idea to paint them. We looked through Pinterest for ideas, and tried a bunch of our favorites.
Our first step was to paint a base layer of color on each rock. We used acrylic paint instead of washable paint since I wanted the paint to last. For many of the rocks, we did a base coat on both sides. There were a few that Buddy only wanted one side painted. Make sure your paint is really dry before turning them over. (Side note – even though Buddy is wearing a smock, he did somehow get paint on the back of his clothes. Make sure you double check clothing immediately after painting, and get the paint out before it dries!)
Once we had a base layer of paint, we came back after an hour to decorate. We used small paint brushes, Q-tips, and paint markers to decorate the rocks. Buddy was actually able to do a lot more of the details than I thought he would be able to.
We used small paint brushes to do the dinosaur rocks and the alligator one that Buddy is doing below. We used paint pens to add details to the dinosaur rocks as well. The monster rocks and hedgehog rocks were also created with small paint brushes followed by paint pens for the smaller details.
We used Q-tips to do the dot rocks. They actually turned out better than I thought they would! We also used Q-tips to do the dots in the polar bears eyes/nose, the lady bugs, and the watermelon. Both the polar bears’ ears and the lady bugs’ eyes needed paint pens for the small details.
When we did paint pens, Buddy wanted to write his name and make his own drawings on some of the rocks. It was very easy for him to use and write neatly. We used Sharpie paint pens and Uni Posca paint pens on the rocks. Both worked very well.
After we added our details, we let everything dry again. Then we coated our rocks with two coats of Mod Podge. We turned our rocks a little too soon and a couple stuck to the newspaper. So make sure you wait a long time before you Mod Podge on the back side of your rocks. We applied sticky google eyes to our monster rocks after the Mod Podge step.
Once the rocks were finished, we picked a few to hide at a park near our house. We had so much fun making the rocks, and even more fun hiding some for others to find. It was a great activity, and I’m sure it will be a summer craft for years to come.
