Sweet Potato Bread

This is my own recipe and mostly I wanted to write it down so I remember how I made it.  I love the orange color the sweet potatoes give to the bread. 

The recipe

1 cup of warm water

1/4 cup of honey

1 TBS of yeast

3 1/2 – 4 cups of bread flour

1 cup of smashed sweet potatoes

2 TBS of oil

3/4 tsp. of salt

Place ingredients in a mixing bowl and mix for 2 minutes.  Add enough flour so that the dough starts to clean the sides of the bowl.  Let it rise until it doubles. Punch it down and dump it out on a floured surface and knead it until it’s smooth and elastic.  Shape into loaf and place in a loaf pan let it rise until it’s about 1 inch above the pan and bake at 350 degrees for 30 min.

 ( I prefer to use whole wheat flour but I was out so this recipe only has white bread flour in it.)

Emma Johns is Awesome!!

I just had to take a minute an publicly thank my friend Emma for creating my new header.  Isn’t it awesome.  I love it! She is one of those people who oozes talent, and I’m a lucky person who gets to know her.  Thanks again Emma!

Why I’m a horrible person… or TALKING Valentine box.

This next project all started yesterday when my 3rd grader handed me this piece of paper from her teacher.

Challenge you say??? Well we started to brain storm my husband, my daughter and I and after about 5 minutes we came up with possibly the most obnoxious idea ever.  I was sort of worried it might be a little to obnoxious but then I read the letter again and it does say the sky’s the limit so we went for it.

We made her Valentine box TALK every time you open it. 
(Here is a video)

Can you just imagine that going off all day in a 3rd grade classroom.

And this is how we did it.

First we got an old juice pouch container, (I had just used up the last 2 that morning it was like it was fate or something)

Then we got a talking Valentines Day card at the store.  We found the perfect one!!  Sorry it was trimmed down before I could take a picture. (someone was really excited to get started)

Then I hot glued it to the top of the box so that every time you open it, it plays.  The only thing left is to decorate it and send it in tomorrow to school, hope it goes over well.   It really is obnoxious I even got tired of listening to it while I was gluing it in.

I don't know what's wrong with me :)

Valentine Dress

When I started making this dress, I wasn’t sure what it would end up looking like.  I had wanted to make my 2 year old a jumper out of this material but I couldn’t find the pattern to the top of the jumper so I improvised and made this little dress up instead without the pattern.  But I’m very happy with the end results and sometimes I still can’t believe I actually made it. It’s about size 3-4T

Ice Cream Cone Cake Pops

Jaime asked me to be a guest poster on her blog to show the cake pops I recently made for a children's church event.  I'm sure many of you have heard of Bakerella - she's famous for her cake pops.  You can find more info at:  http://www.bakerella.com/ and search for "ice cream cone cake pops". My husband got me the Bakerella cake pop book for Christmas, and when I saw these ice cream cone cake pops I had to try them out.  Here are a few pictures of how they turned out:

My husband and my kids also helped out and we had a great time making these!  They are very realistic looking.  One of the two-year-olds who had one thought it was a real ice cream cone and was licking it!

Thanks for having me on your blog, Jaime!  I LOVE all of your ideas!!

--Stephanie

Winner Winner!!

 

Congratulations to Ashley W. the big ol’ box of chocolates winner!

Thanks for playing everyone!!

Banana Cake

I was on allrecipes the other day and they had this banana cake recipe on their homepage. And since I just happened to have a lifetime supply of bananas on my countertop I thought I would give it a try.  I made it for FHE and it was a HUGE hit.  I followed the recipe exactly and the cake was moist and fluffy.  I baked mine in a bunt pan; Because I’m not a fan of icing, the only thing I did different was to serve it with vanilla pudding mixed together with 1/2 tub of cool whip and two diced bananas oh and a little caramel sauce. AWESOME.  The other cool part was that is was really easy to send the rest of the cake (just plain) in everyone’s cold lunches the next day.  I’ll be making this again…someday. 

*What’s sour milk?  I’ll I do to make sour milk is add 1 tbs. of vinegar to every 1 cup of milk used in a recipe.