Fruit Roll-Up Roses

1 Feb

Fruit Roll-Up Roses

Perfect for the man, child, or man-child in your life this Valentine’s Day.

Fruit Roll-Up Roses

While we don’t really do the Valentine’s thing in our house, it’s hard to deny the candy aisle this month between the Reese’s shaped hearts, pink and red M&Ms and other heart-shaped boxed goodies. The special shapes, coloring and packaging works wonders for giving you a reason to buy a giant bag of M&Ms that taste no different from the ones in the good ole yellow bag.

And, on top of loving holiday-ized candy, I’m also a sucker for making holiday inspired creations. I saw an Etsy tutorial for making roses out of ribbon and my brain instantly decided ribbon roses = Fruit by the Foot/Roll-Up roses. Bonus–these smell awesome.

Fruit Roll-Up Roses

How to Make Fruit Roll-Up Roses

You will need:

  • Strawberry Fruit by the Foot (one roll per rose)
  • Strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups (for the outside petals – approximately 1/2-1 roll per rose depending on the designs on your Fruit Roll-Ups you have to cut around. Apparently kids need characters printed on these small sheets of gooey strawberry sugar to be convinced to eat them. )
  • Large Lemon (or orange)
  • Green tissue paper
  • Vase/mason jar/tin can covered in paper–you name it!
  • Favorite candy to fill the vase
  • Toothpicks
  • Scissors
  • Dish of water

 Assembling:

1. Fill your jar/vase with candy.
2. Cover the lemon with green tissue paper. Stuff the lemon in the jar so it is snug but sticks out enough to hold the roses. Making Fruit Roll-Up Roses3. Unroll your Fruit By the Foot. Tear off the inside piece that overlaps. Take your scissors and cut one edge so it is more wavy. This will make the inside of your rose look more natural like overlapping petals. Fruit by the Foot for Fruit Roll-Up Roses4. Now loosely and a little haphazardly, re-roll your Fruit by the Foot. Use a drop of water to “glue” the end on tight once it’s coiled.

5. Unroll your Fruit Roll-Up. With the plastic backing still on, cut out your petals. I used about 5 petals per rose.Making Fruit Roll-Up Roses6. Remove the plastic from each petal. Dab water on the side and bottom of your rose coil to glue the petal on. Press and slide around until the petal is situated as you like. Repeat with remaining four petals.

7. Stick a toothpick in the lemon where you want your rose to go. It should stick out enough only for the rose to rest on it for support. If it sticks out too far, it will show through your rose. Slide your rose on the toothpick. Making Fruit Roll-Up Roses8. Repeat all steps until your bouquet is complete.

9. Cut out a few extra Fruit Roll Up  petals for decoration on the plate or tray around your bouquet.

10. Give to husband to devour.

Fruit Roll-Up Roses

Note: Trying to secretly assemble in a Manhattan apartment with rooms with no doors doesn’t prove to be too successful. Husband could smell those Fruit Roll-Ups from….5 feet away.

Are you making any fun creations this Valentine’s Day? How fun would these be to make for kids in yellow, blue and the funky tie-dyed Fruit Roll-Ups?

Recipe Roll January 15-21, 2012

22 Jan

Featured Recipes January 15-21, 2012

I am lovin having a little catalog via my blog of what I’m cookin up. It’s great to reference later when I need to remember what tweaks I made, and which recipes were a hit or miss. This week’s attempt to get more healthy meals back in the mix after the holiday eating marathon known as Halloween through New Year’s, was much more successful. I even discovered some new favorite recipes.

Daily Garnish's Chickpea Hummus Burgers

Tips and tweaks:  These are so delicious and flavorful, your meat-eating-husband won’t even know you snuck oatmeal into dinner!

My only substitute was pine nuts for pumpkin seeds. I topped it with roasted red peppers, thinly sliced cucumbers, and a mixture of fat free Greek yogurt with red chili sauce (sort of like a healthier fry sauce–note to self next time I make those shroom burgers!).  These flax and whole wheat sandwich thins made the perfect bun–thin and soft like a pita, but more manageable to hold like a hamburger bun. In my mini-NYC kitchen, I only have a mini food processor, so next time I make these I’ll mix all of the veggies in two batches in the food processor first, then add the tahini and olive oil in the bowl after everything is chopped up.

Remake rating: Yes, can’t wait to make these again. They also make a great leftover for lunch the next day.

Skinnytaste Broiled Mahi Mahi

Tips and tweaks: We used Mahi Mahi instead of tilapia.

Remake rating: Yes–making fish in the broiler couldn’t be easier.

Daily Garnish's Creamy (Once) Vegan Kale-Stuffed Mushrooms

Tips and tweaks: Unfortunately, husband isn’t an olive-lovin fool like me. To keep the punch of saltiness from the olives, I substituted caper berries. I also topped the mushrooms with some Parmesan and threw them under the broiler for a few minutes.

Remake rating: Yes. Between this recipe and last week’s soup, I’m gaining a new love for cooking with kale. And the creaminess of the topping from just a little soy milk will surprise you. Now I’m dreaming up how this topping could be modified with spinach and artichokes for a healthier spinach dip….

  • Mock Chicken Kitchen Chop Chop with Mustard Curry Sauce

Mock Chicken Kitchen Chop Chop

Tips and tweaks: Any good Miami alum can’t deny their love for Chicken Kitchen‘s Chop Chop doused in the electric yellow mustard curry sauce. I make our mock mustard curry using 2 tablespoons fat free Greek yogurt, 1 teaspoon plain yellow mustard, 1/2 teaspoon Badia curry powder, a dash of sugar and water to the desired consistency.

Remake rating: This is always a yes for a lazy, no fail night in.

View previous recipe rolls here.

Sometimes Cards Arghhh Cool!

15 Jan

Papyrus Pirate Card

Yeah, I went there. But. Have you been to Papyrus lately??? They have some really awesome cards. Cards that make you actually want to take the time to pull out your dusty, hidden pile of stamps, look up a mailing address (probably in your email archives no less), and go to the mailbox. Rough biz.

But a card you can………WEAR? They always say kids like the wrapping better than the present.

Papyrus Pirate Card

(message goes in folded parrot)

I hear the 4-year old who received this, was more thrilled than my 8-year old

Pirate Pug

and 5-year old were to give it a test run.

Pirate Ninja

Unhappy Pirate Ninja

Sorry pug-mateys.

 

Recipe Roll January 1-14, 2012

15 Jan

Recipe Roll January 1, 2012

Like most everyone else, I started out January with big plans to detox after all the eating involved in October-December…buuuut, I failed VERY successfully with lots of fun nights out eating and drinking some of my favorite things…

like fondue and wine with an old friend…tapas and sangria while watching live flamenco dancers…

Flamenco dancers at Nai Tapas

the BEST dessert at Veniero‘s (the Strawberry Millefoglie)

 Veniero's Strawberry Millefoglie

…along with the Autumn Trifle (hello LAYERS of my favorites–carrot cake, NY cheesecake, and pumpkin cream!)…

Veniero's Autumn Trifle

…to my surprise, my favorite pumpkin beer Southern Tier Pumpking still on tap at the Pony Bar (yes it’s January and I’m eating and drinking pumpkin flavored things still. BUT I swear you can taste the crumbly pie crust in this beer….must. go. back. for. more.)…

 Pumking at the Pony Bar

and smoked whitefish salad on a sesame bagel.

Murray's Smoked Whitefish Salad on a seseame wheat bagel

Mmmmmmm…it was a good two weeks of eating. I did manage to slip in some healthier at home meals here and there like:

Kalyn's Kitchen Stuffed Green Peppers with Brown Rice, Italian Sausage, and Parmesan

Cooking Notes: Clearly used yellow peppers instead of green. I also used Roasted Red Pepper and Asiago Chicken Sausage instead of Italian sausage. I really loved the flavor of the stuffing before baking it in the oven, but felt it dried up a bit after and lost the punch of flavor. Next time, I might bake the peppers alone and then stuff at the end.

And, my Sous Chef, pug, also happily helped finish off a pear while making the salad.

A Pug and a Pear

GOOP Salad with Carrot and Ginger Dressing

Cooking Notes: Previously I made Smitten Kitchen’s version and I love both equally. A big batch makes for a happy week of salads for lunch.

Prosciutto Tortellone with Fig Sauce

Cooking Notes: The fig glaze was an adaptation from the chicken I made. I used 1/8 of everything, plus 1/8 c balsamic vinegar, a dash of cornstarch, and 7 figs and made it in a small sauce pan on the stove. Sweet and delicious and not too over powering for the prosciutto.

Bon Appetit's Brown Rice and Greens Soup with Turkey Sausage

Cooking Notes: I swapped out turkey sausage for Roasted Red Pepper and Asiago Chicken Sausage, added fennel seeds (love them w/ sausage) and extra crushed red pepper.

 Bon Appetit's Cider Glazed Chicken with Broccoli Rabe

Steamy Kitchen's Creamy Miso Chicken Pasta

Cooking Notes: Swapped out broccoli for zucchini.

Have you tried to detox from your holiday binge? We’ll see how this week goes…

View previous recipe rolls.

A Baking Day

4 Jan

Baking Day

5 Jewish Girls

Baking Day Baking Day

4 Recipes

Baking Day

Baking Day

Baking Day

Baking Day

1 Christmas Eve

…turned into baking around 70 peanut butter blossoms, 60 fun frosted sugar cookies, 50 white trash cookies, and 20 cookie dough brownies.

 

Recipe Roll: December 18-31

4 Jan

Recipe Roll 12-18-11

I’ve made it a rough goal to cook at home four times a week….these two weeks will definitely fall short. Between the holidays and traveling, there was not a lot of time for cooking! We did manage to whip up one of the husband’s favorite sandwiches as a party appetizer (sometimes he does have some good ideas). You can also check out what I’ve previously cooked up.

Recipes these weeks:

Remake rating? Yes to both. If you love cheese, there’s nothing like the real over-the-top cheesy Au gratin potatoes, but for a lightened up version, this definitely works. The mushrooms were also a nice lighter dish to go with it.

Modifications: Note to self: get mandolin before making potatoes again! Trying to thinly slice the potatoes a consistent size proved a bit difficult, and the husband kept eying me with the Cutco to make sure I still had all of my fingers.

For the mushrooms, the market didn’t carry light cream cheese, so I decided to give their tofu spinach spread a try as a substitute. Anytime I see tofu included as an ingredient, I’m a bit scared of the texture. I did a taste test and a microwave test beforehand to check on the flavor and meltability since I’ve never had tofu spread. Verdict: this stuff is GOOD! It’s light and tasty and not only worked well in the mushrooms, but as a dip with crackers during a baking day party–more on that later.

Weight Watchers Smoked Salmon, Red Onion and Dill Pizza

Remake rating? Already a repeat in our house. This is so light and easy to make, it’s a great fall back to have a healthy and simple dinner. It would also make a great appetizer. We first had something similar at Season’s 52 in Florida, and when I saw this recipe, I purchased the book just for it.

Modifications: This is not my best rendition! We always add capers but I forgot we were out. I also prefer to use the rectangular wraps so it looks more like flatbread, but the store has stopped carrying them.

Texas Oven-Roasted Beef Brisket

Remake rating? Yes! It was a very successful first attempt.

Modifications: I added Chianti Wine Vinegar and Worcestershire with the beef broth, and roasted carrots and potatoes with the brisket. The wine vinegar added a nice sweet flavor you could really taste in the carrots and potatoes. My rough changes:

- Approx 1 lb brisket
- 3 small Yukon gold potatoes
- 3 carrots
- 1/2 c beef broth
- 1/8-1/4 c Chianti red wine vinegar
- Several dashes Worcestershire sauce
- Less salt
- After the first hour, cooked 275 degrees for 3 hours

  • Husband’s Prosciutto, Fig and Goat Cheese Crostini

Prosciutto, Fig and Goat Cheese Crostini

The husband first had this at a local place and it quickly became his favorite sandwich. After a rude interaction with the manager (resulting in us boycotting this cafe), he started making this sandwich at home. It’s simple enough and delicious! We decided to scale it down into bite-size pieces to bring to a New Year’s party. You will need:

- Your favorite bread or a baguette to slice up for appetizer portions

- Fig spread

- Spreadable goat cheese

- Prosciutto

If you are making a sandwich, we usually put fig spread on one piece of bread and goat cheese on the other with the prosciutto sandwiched in between. For the crostini, first we spread on the goat cheese, added a dollop of fig spread, then topped it with the prosciutto.

Remake rating? Yes. This is another household favorite that has become a regular when we make sandwiches at home. I think it will also be our go-to party app in the future. Everyone is surprised by the unique combination of flavors with the fig spread.

Modifications: None! This is already our own remake.

View previous recipe rolls.

A Festive Fern

24 Dec

Christmas Tree With Felt Ball Garland

I was raised celebrating Hanukkah, and my husband Christmas. Neither of us are religious and only participate in holidays you celebrate with good food or (for me at least) fun decorations. So Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday.  I’ve had a hankering to decorate a tree this year. I’ve never had a tree, but I’ve offered to get one each year for the husband (he always declines my offer). Maybe it was the newlywed fuzzies, a major crafting bug, or just an urge to buy a tree curbside from the corner deli, but this year I decided I’d finally get us one…a little NYC apartment sized one.

Before committing to a tree, I started dreaming up decorating ideas in my head. I couldn’t quite visualize what I wanted, but I wanted a plan before getting a tree. Then I saw Oh Happy Day’s sweet little tree and immediately ordered my felt balls from HandbehgFELTS.

Christmas Tree With Felt Ball Garland

 

Christmas Tree With Felt Ball Garland

I love how sweet and simple it is. I think they look like the classic Christmas bulbs, just muted and unlit.

The dogs surprisingly haven’t paid much attention to their first tree.

Christmas Tree With Felt Ball Garland

I loved working with the felt balls and can’t wait to think up another project with them.

Oreo Ball Snowmen

20 Dec

Oreo Ball Snowmen

..er snow people?? Those scarfs are pretty fancy for snowmen.

Oreo Ball Snowman

I thought up these little guys when brainstorming things to make with Oreo balls for a friend. My first thought for her was Santa hat Oreo balls a la these. I decided I wanted to make some goodies to take into work too, so I thought I might make some for myself. Then I started to think about making edible dreidels as well, and in an attempt to be less complicated (isn’t that how all projects start out??), I thought one happy-holiday-themed item would be better. That’s when the non-denominational Oreo ball snowmen hit me.

They are overall pretty easy to make. The time consuming part depends on how many you want to make, and how detailed you get with your facial features and accessories.

You will need:

  • Oreo balls (One batch makes approximately 4-5 snowmen with a 1/4 cup “snowball” base and a 1/8 cup “snowball” head. These guys are very rich to eat just one, so you could even make them half that size.)
  • Fruit by the Foot (recommend the variety pack version for the fanciest scarfs!)Oreo Ball Snowman
  • Orange tic tacs
  • Mini chocolate chips
  • Coconut flakes (optional)

How to make your snow people:

  • After making the Oreo ball “dough”, use a 1/4 measuring cup to make even sized balls for the base of the snowmen and a 1/8 cup for the heads. Scoop out the dough and roll it into a ball, but make it kind of squatty so that it sits flat on the tray and doesn’t roll around. You’ll also want to make sure the top of the 1/4 round balls is flat so the head can sit on top nicely after it’s dipped. I alternated scooping out 1/4 balls and 1/8 balls to make sure I always had an even amount.
  • Let the balls chill in the fridge and prep your facial features:SnowPope
    • Cut your tic tacs in half for the nose (thought of this idea thanks to Brown Eyed Baker’s Nutter Butter snowmen)
    • Unroll your Fruit by the Foot and rip into 8″ pieces
    • Pour some mini chips on a plate so they’re easy to grab
    • And get your toothpicks out to “glue” everything on
    • Cut the ends off of your strawberries for Santa hats…I thought I would make some Santa snowmen with strawberry Santa hats like the brownies, but the strawberries sat so upright and pointy, they looked like snowmen wearing red Pope hats, nixing my idea. I also planned to make M&M buttons, but they were too large for my stocky guys and there wasn’t much room with the scarfs.

 

  • Time to melt your chocolate! I used Ghiradelli White Baking Chips instead of Almond Bark because that’s all the store had, but use whatever you prefer or can find in the store. You can melt your chocolate in the microwave or with a double boiler. After making my custom Reese’s Pi’s, I really love melting chocolate in my double boiler and feel like I’ve finally mastered perfectly runny chocolate, so that was my method of choice.
  • Now dip, dunk or cover the Oreo balls–find what works best for you. I tried to roll/dunk my Oreo balls in the white chocolate, but even after an hour of chilling in the fridge, I still found little bits of Oreo falling off in the white chocolate and making it look like dirty snow. So, I again used my Reese’s Pi making skills and poured the chocolate over each ball while holding it on a large serving fork.
  • After the white chocolate/almond bark has hardened (about 15 minutes), you’re ready to “glue” them together. Take a dab of white chocolate, and smear it on the top of a 1/4 base and stick a 1/8 ball on top.
  • Now accessorize! Grab a Fruit by the Foot scarf and put a small dab of chocolate on the back inside to help glue it on. Wrap it around your snow man, and style it however you like. Since Fruit by the Foots are sticky, you can have some fun twisting it together, fringing it, whatever you prefer. Any weird edges you may have had where your snowman was glued together will now be hidden.
  • Take a toothpick and put a teeny tiny dot of  chocolate on the back of it–smaller than you think will work. Dab it on the back of a mini chip and glue it on for an eye. If you use too much chocolate, it will squirt out of the eye when you press it on. Remember your Elmer’s glue skills from elementary school. Repeat for the second eye.
  • Glue the tic tac nose on with a small dot of chocolate.
  • Glue the mouth on.
  • Step back and admire.
  • Repeat until the batch is finished.
  • Put snowmen in container and spread coconut flakes around them for added decoration.
  • Leave army of snowmen in fridge for husband to find in the morning and think you are crazy.

Army of snowmen chilling in the fridge

  • Take to work and impress coworkers.

Me with my Oreo ball snowmen

Have you made any fun holiday treats this year? I’m already thinking up other accessories for the snowmen for next year or possibly another batch this winter…

Recipe Roll: December 11-17

18 Dec

Featured Recipes 12-11-11

I’ve made it a rough goal to cook at home four times a week. Check out what I’ve previously cooked up.

Recipes this week:

Remake rating? Yes to both. The shrimp is already a repeat and such a quick and easy meal to make (other than peeling and deveining the shrimp!). The salad dressing isn’t quite like the usual ginger dressing I have at restaurants, but I still really enjoyed it.  The dressing itself is a gorgeous orangey-yellow color. Love that it matched my new blender!

If I did superlatives, this would win best “dressed” of the week.

I also like making anything with ginger because I can use my favorite (and maybe only?) Rachael Ray tip for peeling ginger–use a spoon to scrape off the skin!

Preparing ginger

Modifications: My only changes were using red peppers and cucumbers in the salad and no avocado when I had it with dinner. I couldn’t wait to make the salad again for lunch the next day (with avocado this time)–the dressing is that good!

You can also feel better about yourself knowing this is a modified version of a salad Gwyneth Paltrow makes as part of her detox week. Just ignore most of the other recipes on that page.

 Zucchini Pasta with Tomato Mushroom Sauce

Remake rating? Yes! I was slightly concerned about how the zucchini “pasta” would turn out and if this would be filling enough, but it was great. The sauce is awesome and would be wonderful on regular pasta as well. But, for using substitutes to pasta, I think I now prefer zucchini noodles to spaghetti squash if you’re looking for an alternative. It’s certainly quicker to make!

Modifications: Added a little white wine to finish off the mushrooms while cooking, and some dried oregano and dried basil after the tomatoes were cooking.

Lobster Ravioli with Joe's Stone Crab Mustard Sauce

Remake rating? Yes. The ravioli was a bit of a cheat–fresh made ravioli from the market I just had to boil. The sauce was the husband’s idea as a take on the mustard sauce you get at Joe’s Stone Crab (not to be confused with Joe’s Crab Shack!). It was a unique idea for pasta and a great combo!

Modifications: I didn’t quite measure everything as it is in the recipe, but I substituted fat-free Greek Yogurt for mayo, Dijon mustard for dry mustard and skim milk for the cream and added in slowly to make it as thin of consistency as I wanted.

Sante Fe Crockpot Chicken Remix

Remake rating? Yes, but still need to tweak it some more.

Modifications: The Smart Ones Santa Fe Style Rice and Beans is maybe the best frozen dinner ever, if frozen dinners could be considered good. The cheesey sour cream sauce on it is so tasty. I made a bed of brown ride in the bottom of a pan, poured 2 cups of the Crockpot Santa Fe Chicken on top (swapped red beans for black), drizzled my sauce over it (I mixed together light sour cream, fat-free milk to thin it out, Sriracha sauce and some reduced fat ranch dressing), and a shredded mix of white cheese and reduced fat cheddar. Then popped it in the broiler until the cheese was melted. The sauce alone was really good but I think I just need to use more next time.

Check out the recipe links for more appetizing pics of each dish or view previous recipes.

Make Your Own Reese’s

12 Dec

Make Your Own Reese's

If you’re a Reese’s cups fan, you know the seasonal shapes taste THE best. Specifically, the eggs, trees and hearts. Maybe it’s the ratio of chocolate to peanut butter, the softer outer chocolate shell (notice the bells don’t taste as good!), who knows, but they just taste better! After visiting us around Easter one year, the husband introduced my mom to the wonder of the egg shaped cups and she learned the secret as well.

For my mom’s 60th birthday, we thought she deserved her own custom Reese’s shape. Since she’s a math teacher, I thought a π shaped Reese’s would be perfect to wish her a Hap-pi Birthday–see what I did there?

Make Your Own Reeses

I started googling to see if anyone had tips to make their own shapes and saw Miss Make’s rendition. After seeing proof it could be done, I immediately ordered my π cookie cutter.

I waited until the weekend before the big day to make her Reese’s. I was going to have to ship them, so I wanted to time it just right. I used this Buckeye’s recipe (with reviewer tip to use 3 cups of powdered sugar without sifting, only adding 1 cup at a time) and a lot of trial and error. LOTS of trial and error.

After attempting to dunk my pi’s with mediocre results and broken pieces,

(Chocolate Covered Carnage)

ruining my first batch of melted chocolate trying to thin it out (don’t add cream!),

(Seized chocolate)

and breaking most of my batch after peeling them off the wax paper,

(peanut butter carnage)

I learned a few lessons. There was so much disappointing but delicious failed attempts, the dogs eventually caught on by the third round of rolling out pi’s, and they were ready to help as the wax paper clean-up crew.

Peanut butter clean-up crew

(note: no dog-cleaned wax paper was reused in the making of these pi’s or contained chocolate)

While my final result was 24 close-to-perfect Reese’s pi’s, I probably rolled out around 48 in total.

From pi’s breaking after taking them off the wax paper, to snapping “legs” off in the melted chocolate, to my chocolate not being runny enough, it took awhile to master my technique from start to finish.

Lessons Learned

  • Carefully freeze your “naked” Reese’s. Since you’re going to be dipping your shape in hot gooey chocolate, it’s better if it’s a little frozen so it doesn’t immediately lose form; however, my pi’s started getting stuck to the wax paper and breaking when I pulled them off. To avoid this, simply use a spatula (or your hands) to lift the shape and move it over shortly after you first rest it on the wax so it doesn’t stick.
  • Get your chocolate as runny as possible. After breaking the “legs” off several pi’s and making my chocolate “seize” from throwing in some heavy cream, I googled and googled and googled trying to find the secret to the runniest, dippable chocolate. I couldn’t get my pi’s in and out of the chocolate fast enough without either losing it in the bowl of chocolate, or a pi “leg” breaking off from the heat and weight of the melted chocolate. I used shortening per Miss Make, but it still didn’t seem runny enough. I consulted the chocolate experts and saw their ratio of shortening was higher. I also used Hershey’s chips in the first batch and switched to Ghiradelli from there on. The magic might have been a mix of both.
  • Don’t dunk. Depending on your shape, you may be able to just roll it around in the chocolate like a buckeye. But if your shape is more delicate, just spread the chocolate! Even after getting the melted chocolate as perfect of a consistency as seemed possible, the pi’s were impossible to dunk in and out of the chocolate and survive. I again returned to the Internet for tips, searching this time to see how bakers perfectly ice cookies. This lesson saved the day weekend for me. I found the only successful way to coat my pi’s, was to hold them over the melted chocolate on a serving fork, spoon the chocolate over the top, then quickly spread it out with the back of a large spoon. The backs had to stay “naked”, but after several failed attempts, this worked for me!
  • Reuse your peanut butter carnage. This is a really obvious one, but I guess I was so consumed in cranking them out, it was somewhat of an Oprah “ah ha” moment for me. Yes that big. After making 3 batches of buckeyes and rolling out pi’s, I was pretty frustrated to have finally mastered the technique, and only have 12 good pi’s to send my mom. I knew my dad was meeting her at school for a surprise party with the math department, so there was no way I would be happy with not being able to send enough to have one per math teacher (plus of course mom would want extras to take home). While taking a breather to walk the dogs, I realized, duh, just let the mound of peanut butter pi carnage return to room temperature, and roll it out again. Doh!
  • Dump the leftover chocolate. When you’re ready to clean up, it’s easier to dump out any leftover chocolate before adding soap and water. After a couple of wasted batches of chocolate, I became much more efficient at cleaning my double boiler. Once you’ve scraped off as much wet chocolate as you can, then add hot water to keep it from immediately seizing into a hard mess.

The fun part came when it was time to package them all up. Originally I intended to individually wrap each one just like a real seasonal Reese’s, but due to the large size of each pi, I decided this would be too bulky and potentially a chocolate mess. I found a shoe box and covered the inside with freezer paper (to help keep it cold during shipping and feel a little more sanitary). I printed my custom wrapper I designed and covered the lid of the box, leaving flaps on the edge to create the zig-zag tears.

(*Actual size compared to 14 pound dog)

 

For each layer, I covered a piece of cardboard in mini versions of the design to make it appear like individually wrapped pi’s and help keep the safe during shipping.

Amazingly, the pi’s almost all arrived without breaking or melting and in one pi-ece. My dad even followed my one-page instructions (his coworkers must think I’m insane) about how to carefully unpack the box and bring them to the party.

(The birthday girl with her Reese’s Pi–shipped all the way from NYC to OKC!)

Now I’m looking forward to trying this again with a new shape now that I have my technique down! What shape would you make if you created your own Reese’s? Or if Reese’s added a new seasonal shape, what should it be? The gap between Easter Egg Reese’s and Halloween Pumpkins is far too long!