Vegan Pound Cake and School Party Ideas

Ok, so first off I have to share what I found tonight.  A vegan pound cake!  It is all ready to go, except this recipe has almond extract.  I'm going to try just leaving it out and see how it goes.  If it tastes OK there will be fresh strawberries and coconut whipped cream on top.  

Now, I've been slowly collecting some ideas for school party treats on pinterest.  I realize that's nuts for two reasons

1)  My daughter isn't even school aged

2) We haven't decided if she is going to public school

Nevertheless, I have been doing it so I just as well share in case some of your children are school aged.  I can only imagine birthday parties can be pretty hard to deal with.    So the pinner for this idea doesn't seem to have a source, so I can't properly give credit, but here is the picture.  I would use a minute maid apple juice, but use whatever you like.  Those are raisin boxes for the feet if you can't tell.

cute right?

On intimate weddings  they made homemade cookies and placed them in CD sleeves.  I thought the idea was cool, but wonder if schools let you bring homemade treats anymore.  You could even use the printer and list the ingredients on back I bet. 

Over at The Princess and the Frog they made some cute caterpillars by putting grapes on kebabs.

Now on to Fox News.  Yes, you heard me right.  They posted an article earlier this month about allergen free snacks for school.  I'm so glad that someone had the thought to make this list of prepackaged goodies that are safe.  

One final thing I want to share with you.  I follow the nut free mom blog and in March she posted about safe Easter parties at school.  In the comments section, she got one of "those" responses.  You know the " your kid is the center of the universe, we should eat what we want" kind of people.  I hope that I always remember the way she responded, because it's perfect.  She was never negative or rude and actually got her point across very well and educated people in the process.  I hope that when my day comes, I can do as well as Jenny did.  Check it out.


Thanks to Caroline from grateful foodie for sharing her page on making the robot valentines.  Here she has step by step directions, and below is a picture of her robots.




I'm going to keep adding to this post as I find more options, so make sure to check back in.  

Cinnabun Cake

So I've been wasting a lot of time on pinterest while my foot is up and I found a recipe for Cinnabun Cake and it is a pretty good coffee cake.  The link to the original is here.

(here is her picture.  I messed up my frosting bc I was being lazy and decided to eyeball the milk.  Bad idea)


Cinnabun Cake
3c. flour
1c. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 c. milk replament (soy, rice, whatever)
2 Tbsp. ground flax mixed with 6 Tbsp. water ( or 2 eggs worth of replacer)
2 tsp. vanilla
1 stick of margarine (blue bonnet light or earth balance

for the filling
2 sticks margarine, softened (not melted)
1 c. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. flour
2 Tbsp. cinnamon

Glaze


2 c. powdered sugar
5 Tbsp. milk replacement
1 tsp. vanilla


Preheat your oven to 350*F and grease and flour a 9x13 pan.  Combine the flour, sugar, and baking powder in a bowl.  Stir in the vanilla, and the milk and egg replacements.  Finally stir in the melted margarine.  Next up, combine all the ingredients for the filling, then plop spoonfuls into the filling and swirl it around with a butter knife.  Bake for about 25  minutes.  Once the cake has cooled mix the glaze ingredients and spread it evenly over the top of the cake.  

See my cake really was ugly, but it sure tasted good.  You will want to eat this cake within a couple days or it will start to dry out.  Happy eating!

Some great finds!

Hi all, I have to tell you why I have been negligent lately.  We are getting ready to move and I broke my foot a couple weeks ago.  I can't put any weight on it at all and the crutches are slowing me down.  My poor husband even had to go to the grocery store!  Once it quits swelling up I plan to get back into the swing of things.  In the meantime, here are some safe recipes I found on other blogs.  Hope you like some of them.

First up is chocolate granola.  I can't get enough granola, but buying it safe is expensive, so I always make my own.  I can't think of anything better to start my day with.

This one is in honor of my husband.  He loves bread pudding, but I have never made it for him.  I guess now I have no excuse.  Another thing my husband, and maybe the whole world, loves is ranch.  Just tonight I found a recipe for ranch seasoning.  Now when I find those recipes that call for the ranch packets I know what to sub!

Finally, stuffed burgers and she gives you three options for the filling.  I can't wait to try this one.

One more thing.  I found a website called mommy hates cooking.  Kristy came up with a genius idea here and I'm pretty jealous I didn't come up with it myself.  She has made a four week meal plan with 120 recipes and ingredient lists for each week.  How easy would grocery shopping be with your list already made?!  The only downfall is that it's six bucks.  I haven't decided if I'm going to buy it yet or not, but thought I would pass it along in case someone else is interested.   She has different meal plans, so make sure you scroll down to the milk, egg, nut, and garlic free one.  Hope you all have a great week.