Pumpkin Pie Popsicles and Toadstool Cupcakes

Oh joy! Oh joy! Oh joy!

The latest "Family Fun" magazine has a recipe for pumpkin pie popsicles!

Ava and I made them using the pumpkin leftover from the pumpkin pie spice lattes from the previous nights. We added some heavy cream, maple syrup and Penzeys pumpkin pie spice...mixed it all together...naturally tasted it to see if it was any good (oh...and it WAS SOOOO GOOD!).

Then we had fun putting it in our popsicle molds (ours is from Ikea)...kinda tricky. Ava couldn't get the hang of it....truly a mess....and then we stuck them in the freezer.

They're still in the freezer. I'll let you know how they turned out. (my sourdough starter is in the background...thanks Mama! Hopefully it'll work.)

VERDICT- OH MY! The popsicles were rich and creamy and tasted just like pumpkin pie (minus the crust). Definitely try these!

AND then there are the toadstool cupcakes.

That's another story.

I'm not sure what brought this up but Ava kept saying that she wanted toadstool cake for her birthday just like the one I made for Annika's last birthday.

So...like a good mommy (or a silly one) I said we could make some toadstool cupcakes today.

First we baked up a batch of carrot cake in regular and miniature muffin tins. (Ava and I did this before nap time).

After we picked up Annika from school we made the cream cheese frosting and I stuck some of the frosting in a Ziploc bag. We colored the rest of the frosting red. I tried adding black to the red to make it a deeper red- didn't work. It's a dark pink now.

Then the MESS really started!

We frosted the cupcakes. Some of it landed on the cupcakes. And on the counter. And on our faces. And on the floor. Red everywhere!

After we covered them all with red frosting we put the white dots on...using the frosting in the bag. I squeezed the frosting to one corner of the bag and cut the corner off. It worked!

Have I ever mentioned how much I love toadstools? (Fliegenpilze) ??? I'm sure I must have. I just don't understand why...the real mushrooms ones are poisonous!

OH! I totally forgot to mention that yesterday a little black capped chickadee found its way into our garage. I tried helping it out but it wasn't having any of my help. So I left the garage door open and it finally found the way out.