Baked Banana Oatmeal

We have a lot of oatmeal. Lot. Of. It. And we love oatmeal, eat it for some meal or other (not nearly always breakfast) just about every other day.

I don't actually have a lot of instant oatmeal, however, because instant oatmeal isn't the cheapest where I shop, and so not only do I have to insure a clean pot before I begin (which sux), but I also have to hang out for something like 20 minutes just to get that dang oatmeal cooked (double sux).

I tried mixing up a big batch of overnight oatmeal to save time the next day, but this was so not a success that it wasn't even funny. The texture was just not okay to the children, and to children texture? It's everything.

This, however, was such a crazy success that it's also not even funny:

Baked banana oatmeal (it's not actually that yellow--the light in my kitchen on a rainy day is yet another thing that sux) is so stinkin' good that it's one of the few recipes in my repertoire that gets not double, not tripled, but quadrupled when I bake it. The only thing that I change about the recipe is the sugar--the recipe's author doesn't put any sugar in, because he is apparently some kind of sugar-free superhero. I, on the other hand, dust the top of the raw oatmeal mixture generously with organic turbinado sugar just before I put it into the oven. Cooking on top of the bananas and into the oatmeal, it comes out perfectly sweet.

Eat it hot, cold, or room temperature, and seriously, quadruple the recipe, because it's just that good.

Where Have I Been?

I've been in Arkansas, feeling unspeakably, incredibly, couldn't-be-prouder proud of a certain beloved baby cousin:

Watch out, because he's just about one second away from taking the world by storm.

Tutorial: Easy Rainbow Cake

NOTE: The following post was originally posted a week ago for just a few hours before Blogger crashed and deleted it. Fortunately, it was recently recovered back to my draft posts, so here it is again!

When you were a little kid, did your parents have a "special" cake, the one that got baked for all the special occasions, the one that you ALWAYS requested for your birthday or a celebration or any time that you got to be in charge of picking the cake?

When I was a little girl, Mammaw's chocolate chip bundt cake was THE cake.

For my little girls, I think that my rainbow cake is now the cake. We had rainbow cake last year for Sydney's birthday, and then for her birthday party--made sense, because her party theme was rainbows. This year, however, for Sydney's birthday, with a choice among all the cakes in the entire world--cookie cake, ice cream cake, chocolate cake, pink cake--her request was, again, for a rainbow cake.

Now, you can do a rainbow cake two ways: the easy way, or the hard way. I do the hard way for the birthday party, and the easy way for the birthday. The easy way still, obviously, takes more work than just buying a birthday cake from Sam's Club, but it's really not that hard, since you can even use a box of cake mix if you want, and the impact of the finished cake is giant.

Here's how to make rainbow cake the easy way, because you are definitely going to want to do this yourself. It's that fun:

Prepare a double batch of white cake using your preferred method. I have made white cake from scratch and have used white cake mix for this recipe--it works either way. If you're a total baking newb, however, double-check your cake mix box to make sure that you're buying white cake mix. When I was a total baking newb I brought both yellow cake mix AND white cake mix to my aunt, who was making a giant dinosaur cake for Will and needed two boxes of mix--she was not pleased.

I advise making a double batch of cake mix because you'll have more cake batter to dye, and so it'll be easier to work with as a whole. If you only need one cake or one batch of cupcakes, then just bake the rest and freeze it for later--rainbow cupcakes make a nommy breakfast treat!

Separate the cake batter into as many separate bowls as you want colors in your cake, and dye each bowl of batter separately, using a clean spoon for each:

For a traditional rainbow cake you want to go ROY G. BIV, but this is just a fun project for Sydney's birthday, so I let the girls choose any and all colors that they wanted.

I highly recommend using better-quality gel or paste food coloring for this project--the point is the carnival colors of the cake, and those colors are just more vivid with better coloring.

If you're making this cake yourself, as the adult, you can work a little more systematically from this point, but, especially if you're baking cupcakes (as I am here), this project is a fabulous one to let little kids do themselves from here. Especially for cupcakes, which cook fairly quickly, this would also be a fun party activity to allow little party guests to design their own cupcake.

Arrange all the different bowls of colored mix so that they're accessible, each with its own spoon:

Don't mix up the spoons!

Using the dedicated spoons, drop spoonfuls of cake batter into the cake pan however you'd like:

You can smooth out a certain color, of course, but don't stir, because you don't want to blend the different colors together--you've already eaten brown cake before, haven't you?

You can use this same cake technique for a full-size cake pan, a smaller individual cake pan, as Sydney has above, or for cupcakes:

 

When you're finished, bake as usual.

I think that you'll be really pleased with what you end up with:

The birthday girl seems pleased, doesn't she?

I wouldn't actually let her put her treasured cupcake IN her brand-new decorated treasure chest (thanks, Abby!), so on top had to suffice:

Stick around, because Syd has already requested a star-shaped layered rainbow cake for her star-themed birthday party this weekend, and so if I'm making a layered rainbow cake, anyway, well, then I might as well write a tutorial!

Here's the food coloring we used:

Her Star Party

Sydney wanted a "Star Party" for her fifth birthday.

Happy to oblige, my sweet!

As the little party attendees arrived, they were invited out back to paint a star mural on brown paper taped to the garage wall:

When they filled up the paper, it turned out that nobody wanted to paint over anybody else's work, but they all still wanted to paint, so I dragged out some giant sheets of newsprint, and the consensus moved onward to rainbows:

There was a star-shaped piñata for whacking (to make your own, check out my paper mache piñata tutorial over at Crafting a Green World):  

 Syd's having a little trouble letting go of her precious piñata, can't you tell?

Know what could make her feel better, though?

Why, that piñata's filled with candy!

We admired, sang over, cut, and served the rainbow layer cake decorated with star sprinkles:

And Sydney received presents from some very generous and loving good friends:

It was, clearly, the best birthday ever, and Sydney began her sixth year of life happy, well loved, and full of sugar, just as she'd planned.

Stay tuned, because Willow's birthday party will be later this summer, and she's already chosen her theme:

The Ocean.

Watermelon whale, blue Jello, and dolphin piñata, here we come!

The Birthday Girl's Birthday Candles

I had to craft up some long and skinny birthday candles for Syd's star cake--

--so I went ahead and made up some extra rolled beeswax birthday candle sets for for my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

 
 
 
And yes, that's Willow having a pretend birthday party out in the backyard, complete with strawberry bundt cake and a real birthday candle, lit. What's the point in having a million handmade birthday candles if you don't get to light them, make a wish, and blow them out every single day?

No point at all, if you ask me.

A Little Bit of Sibling Rivalry

I found this lying in the hall this morning, after Willow had disappeared in a huge funk about the very existence of her little sister--Sydney has apparently stolen Willow's love for the Rainbow Fairy books, even though Sydney can't even read them herself but has to have them read to her, and Sydney has also stolen Willow's love for the Petz computer game from the library, even though she doesn't even teach the animals any tricks, just dresses them up in silly costumes, AND Sydney has stolen Willow's love for the Crazy Machines computer game from the library, as well, even though she always cries at the third problem because she can't get through it:

My favorite part is the monsters at top and bottom, laughing evilly.

Syd can hold her own, however--here's a picture that she drew at the library yesterday, and presented to me in a sealed envelope with my name on it:

It's a family portrait, with me, Matt, and Sydney, all three cats, and the goldfish.

Who's missing from the portrait? Hmmm....

We love the Rainbow Fairy books and Crazy Machines!

Writing versus Composition

Willow does not enjoy the physical act of writing, although she does greatly enjoy the mental activity of composition. Therefore, I require only a minimal amount of the former, and let her indulge in a massive amount of the latter, such as this little ditty, which Willow dictated, I served as amanuensis to, and she illustrated:

Poor Ned.

Willow's fine motor skills and hand strength are on par with her peers--I know this through watching her create Perler bead mosaics and Spiderman up all our door jambs--so my next move is to see if she'd like to learn how to type. Writing by hand is all awesome and old-school and I couldn't make a to-do list without it, but if I really want to sit down and write something, and I'm NOT following the kids around the Wonderlab or the playground for a change, then I know that I, at least, prefer to be able to get thoughts written down as quickly as I make them up. Why should the kid prefer any less?