pumpkin patch cupcakes from my book, Sugarlicious

 apple cake pop placecards from my book, Sugarlicious

Now that Halloween is officially over, it’s time to start thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas. Given my almost-bursting belly at 8 months pregnant, I might be relying a bit heavily on the old archives this season. As always, I’ll keep my SEASONAL button up there updated (or I’ll try to). Here are some favorites from Thanksgiving past. Click the photos or the captions to go to the original posts.

You can check out more ideas in this Thanksgiving roundup for Reader’s Digest I made awhile back and I have a few more treats at Celebrations.

 Thanksgiving Day marshmallow activity for kids

Give kids marshmallows and edible writers and let them make their own! Printable instructions included in the post.

easy pumpkin pie cookies

bite-size Fall cookies

falling leaves cookies

A note to all those suffering the effects of Superstorm Sandy… It feels very odd to post today on cookies and sweets when my mind is elsewhere. My heart goes to all of those impacted by the Storm! I’m in Washington DC, where we got by relatively unscathed. But my family is from the New Jersey shore, and I’ve been obsessively checking for updates. I’m extremely fortunate my family are all safe, but my brother and his family are without power indefinitely and still shaken by the storm. My dear cousin and her family lost their home to the storm.  Merely searching for a gas station is a many-hours long ordeal, and my brother has sadly witnessed violence and utter chaos in the wake of the storm. I hope you’ll all keep those who lost so much in your hearts as well!  Rebuilding will take much time and patience, and I, like many, I’m sure, are already seeking ways to help.  Thank you for visiting and listening!

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So this post is a little unusual without the how-tos and whatnot, but I wanted to share with you a bit of what I’ve been up to the past week. Spurred by the desire to make lots o’ money to help my daughter’s new, up-and-coming charter school here in Washington DC, and also a bit motivated by mom guilt because my time is about to be limited and I may be unable to help once this baby arrives, I volunteered to help with the Fall Fest fundraiser. And by the way, I just “helped.” The parents running this event are freakin’ amazing. Forgive my language, but seriously, these are some committed and talented moms and dads.

A little background if you don’t have charter schools in your area…  public charter schools offer kids an alternative to their local public school. But the charter schools, just like their public school counterparts, vary in quality and all have to fight to survive and to give their kids the best resources possible. Money is essential for that, of course, though dedicated parents and school staff are even more important. So yeah, we live next door–actually NEXT DOOR– to our local elementary school, but instead I drive 30 minutes in rush hour traffic to drop my kid off in the heart of the city so she can attend this school with kids from every single ward in Washington DC also willing to make the trek.  I could go on and on about this charter school topic, so I’ll stop here. Read a bit about the Washington DC public school system HERE from my post last year (though my daughter is actually on page 23 in the Washington Post gallery, not 9 anymore) and read more about my daughter’s school, the Inspired Teaching Public Charter School HERE. And anyone with kids in DC looking into charter schools, feel free to contact me with questions about Maeve’s school!

Back to the fundraiser. Mostly my helping involved many hours of sorting and lifting and moving and pricing goods to sell at our outrageously successful Sidewalk Sale. (Our Sidewalk Sale rocked!)  But I also made some cookies and marshmallows to sell for the fest, which apparently sold out (yay!) though I missed the cookie marshmallow bonanza since I was out selling all day at said Sidewalk Sale. I wish I took more pictures.

I made a bunch of pumpkin and sunflower decorated cookies, wrapped them individually in cellophane bags with ribbon and put them in a basket. I also used the bags of Jumbo marshmallows that I got from KRAFT Jet-Puffed. Remember these and these? I just used my usual how-tos for coating marshmallows in sprinkles (find how-tos HERE, and the video HERE), let them dry for several hours, and wrapped each in cellophane bag with ribbon. I propped them in a Styrofoam block covered in tissue paper and sold them for a buck each. They were Jumbo-sized after all. Well, these marshmallows sold out completely. So thank you to Jet-Puffed for helping raise money for my kid’s school!!

Oh yes, and I also made cookies for the Chili cook-off winners.

I didn’t wrap alone. Maeve had a couple of her friends/schoolmates (and the mom of friends/schoolmates who also led the Sidewalk Sale and its stunning success) come over to help. It was their fundraiser after all!

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I’ve been very into cookie sticks of late. Which is a terribly odd sentence to type, I realize. I’ve always been into candy eyes for Hallowen. Stick some eyes on just about anything and it becomes an instant monster. And so the merging of cookie sticks and candy eyes was inevitable, at least in my mind if no other.

You don’t need any special cookie cutter to cut these out, and they are so simple to decorate. The beauty of monsters, too, is that you can just squeeze the icing around all over the place and it doesn’t matter. Errors can’t be seen on monsters. They just look purposeful and make your monster more interesting. And that’s what makes these ideal for kids to decorate, too.

And boy are they cute. That’s the other benefit of candy eyes. Eyes are so creepy, but candy eyes make stuff cute. I’m very aware of this eye anomaly, by the way.

how to make monster cookie sticks

you will need:*

cookie dough

royal icing

dough scraper or knife

food coloring

disposable decorating bags

couplers

rubber bands

size 3, 4 and 5 decorating tips

candy eyes

*Find the decorating bags, couplers, tips and candy eyes in the craft store. For food coloring, I suggest Americolor Soft Gel Pastes, available in specialty stores and online (Electric Green, Electric Purple, Bright White and Orange used here).   This is the dough scraper I use, HERE, from Sur la Table. You can also use a knife, but this tool makes cutting sticks super easy and consistent, especially with the handy ruler.

step one: make your cookie sticks

Prepare the cookie dough according to the recipe, chill for a couple hours, roll out 1/4-inch thick and use the dough scraper or knife to cut out sticks. My sticks are about 4 1/2 inches long by 1/2 inch wide. Place the sticks on a baking tray lined with parchment paper and bake according to the recipe. Let cool completely.

step two: prepare your royal icing

Prepare royal icing according to the recipe. Divide the icing and tint your preferred colors. I made white, purple, slime green and orange. Prepare decorating bags with couplers and tips, fill with icing and close tightly with rubber bands.

step three: decorate your cookies

Decorate your cookies however you like, with either a size 3, 4, or 5 tip, depending on your preference. For the mummies, I just piped back and forth to make stripes. For the green, fuzzy monsters, I piped close zig zags up and down the cookie. For the purple monsters, I just piped dots. And for the orange monsters, I piped curly cues. Press two eyes into the icing. Let the cookies dry well, preferably overnight, before handling and packaging. For basic cookie decorating instructions, click HERE.

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When I was a kid, I used to dream of owning an apple orchard when I grew up. (Or, more specifically, I dreamed of being an architect veterinarian who owned an apple orchard.) I live in the heart of a major city, Washington DC, so no apple orchard for me. Though I do like to trek out to Maryland to go apple picking at least once a year. I’d like to say these apples are from a day at the farm, but alas, I’ve not yet made it out there. But they are freshly picked from my local Giant. (UPDATE for those terribly worried I wouldn’t make it apple picking… I went yesterday and got 18 pounds of apples. But I wrote this post last week. Ah well, more apple-y days ahead.)

It’s so much easier to eat a bite of apple pie then to deal with the whole knife and slicing and plate and fork thing. Though I guess eating a slice of apple pie isn’t too difficult either. So then I’ll say cuter instead. Yeah, cuter. I used sticks I gathered from the yard, washed them and stuck them in the top. Said sticks are optional, and a couple pulled right out of the apple pie bites when I went to pick them up. A skewer with a pointy end  would be much more practical. But the sticks are, well, just so much more right, so I still vote sticks.

how to make apple pie bites on a stick

you will need:

1 large Granny Smith apple

1 small ice cream scoop*

1 9-inch refrigerated pie crust  (Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie Crusts used here)

3-inch circle cookie cutter

2 tablespoons sugar, plus additional

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, plus additional

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 egg

flour

rolling pin

sticks or skewers (optional)

* I used a small scoop 1 1/4-inch in diameter. You don’t really need an ice cream scoop since my apple “balls” were more “chunks” anyway, you could use a knife to cut pieces about 1 inch to 1 1/4 inch cubed.

what to do:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Pare and core the apple. Use the scoop or just a knife to make apple chunks about 1-inch to 1 1/4-inch across. In a small bowl, mix 2 tablespoons sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and the nutmeg. Dip and roll the apple pieces in the sugar mixture until fully coated.

Unroll a refrigerated pie crust and cut out circles with the cutter. Gather the scraps and re-roll on a floured surface about 1/8-inch thick. Cut out remaining circles. You’ll need one for each apple piece. Place a sugar-coated apple piece in the center of a pie crust circle and gather the pie crust around the top of the apple and pinch to seal. (Some of the apple may peek through at the top.) Place on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Repeat with the remaining pie crust circles and apple pieces. Beat the egg with a couple teaspoons of water, and brush over the pie crusts. Use the remaining sugar mixture, or, mix more cinnamon and sugar together, and sprinkle over the apple pies.

Bake for 14 to 16 minutes until the crusts are browned. Remove from the oven and insert the sticks. As the pie bites cool, the sticks will become more secure. (More secure, not totally secure, so don’t go waving these around.) Makes about 10 bites.

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This whole piping chocolate on a stick thing is far from new on this blog. I’ve made chocolate and bones pops, chocolate spider pops,  and bat wings and spider legs for Oreo Cakesters. It’s one of the easiest treats to make, aside from decorating marshmallows. I had some leftover melted chocolate from another project (more on that soon), so I just dumped it in a decorating bag, snipped the end, grabbed some lollipop sticks and candy eyes and done and done.

And given the blob thing, you don’t even have to be precise with the piping part. Once the chocolate cools well enough to handle, kids can easily master these.

how to make monster chocolate pops

you will need:*

*Use any kind of chocolate you like, semi-sweet, milk, dark, vegan, whatever. Find the decorating bags, lollipop sticks and candy eyes in the craft store.

what to do:

Line a baking tray with wax paper and set aside. Fill a decorating bag with chocolate chips, about 1/2 full. Microwave at 70 percent power for 1 minute, then at 30 second intervals, massaging the chocolate chips periodically, until the chips are almost completely melted. Massage the chips in the bag until totally melted.  Snip 1/4 inch from the tip of the decorating bag. Pipe a dot on the wax paper, place the lollipop stick on the dot, then pipe a blob of chocolate on top. Add candy eyes. Once the tray is filled, refrigerate until set, an hour or two. TIP: close the bag with a rubber band after the chocolate is melted so it doesn’t ooze out the top.

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Feel free to share (nicely)! While my blog's photographs and text are protected by copyright, I do allow (and encourage) you to share ONE photograph with credit to "the decorated cookie" and link to this blog post. PLEASE don't reprint any part of the blog post and PLEASE don't post a photo without credit. Thank you!