Cake Pops Anyone?

For this dark mid November Monday we decided to go with a cheery project! What is cheerier than a cake pop? The cake pops we had seen and tried were cute, bright, and clever! On Youtube, Bakerella, the queen of cake pops told us that although there were a lot of steps to making cake pops, they were simple.

So on this Make It Happen Monday we decided to go for it!

First you bake a cake in a 13x9 inch pan. We went with chocolate.

After it is completely cool, cut it into quarters.

Simple!

Crumble the cake and mix with 2 cups of frosting.

Simple!

Roll into balls and let set in the freezer for about 15 minutes.

Messy but simple!

Melt candy melts, we used white chocolate, in a double boiler.

Simple.

The next part got a bit tricky. So tricky we forgot to capture it in photos!

You take a lollipop stick and dip it in the white chocolate. You insert it half way into the chocolate cake ball. Then you dip the cake ball into the melted white chocolate, making sure not to stir it around in there or push the stick all the way through the top! Be careful taking it out of the coating because sometimes just the stick comes out! Then carefully tap off the excess coating, but don't take too long because then the candy sprinkle won't stick! If you don't get all the extra coating off the pop it will just drip down the lollipop stick!

Tricky.

Our finished products.

Messy.

The aftermath.

Messy.

The girls team has a whole new appreciation for cake pops! 

How does Bakerella make them look like muppets, turkeys and monkeys? We could barely get the sprinkles on them! Even though our finished product did not live up to our vision of what we wanted to do with our cake pops, they were still cheery! They made us cheery. We cheered at how bad we were at this! We think we will stick with pie pops.

Check out Bakerella.com to see how a professional does this.

Cheese Stuffed Shells

Tonight the Girls Team whipped up a classic favorite, Cheese Stuffed Shells. While this meal has been a tradition around our house for many years, we've never attempted to make them from scratch! At first I was intimidated by the number of steps and ingredients between the sauce and stuffing, but making this proved easier than I thought!

The meat sauce was very flavorful and such a positive step up from store bought red sauce. Although the recipe calls for sausage, we used ground turkey for a healthier option.

We boiled the shells for 7 minutes:

And then made the stuffing: ricotta cheese, parmesan cheese, and romano cheese, basil, parsely, one egg and salt and pepper to taste. Cheese, cheese, cheese!!!!

Then the fun part begins! Stuffing the shells, placing them over meat sauce and topping them with more sauce and cheese...

After baking the stuffed shells for 25 minutes, they were perfect! The filling was cheesy, melted and warm, and the shells were soft - not tough or overcooked at all! 

If interested, we found our recipe here. Enjoy!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween happens to be the Girls Team FAVORITE holiday so it was a perfect coincidence that it fell on a Monday this year! We stuck with the classics for our Make It Happen Monday projects. We carved pumpkins and roasted pumpkin seeds!


Our pumpkins are from Zittle Farms, a local place here in town. The pumpkins that we bought were huge and sturdy, but slightly overpriced. 

All cleaned out. The worst part is over with! 

In an effort to challenge herself beyond the traditional triangle eyes and round mouth, my mom chose to carve this pattern:

It turned out fabulously!

Dad's Frankenstien. Perfect design for the shape of the pumpkin.

My Angry Bird pumpkin!

Instead of candles, we used Jack-O-Lantern glow sticks which are shaped like candles and have spikes attached to the bottom so they stay upright in the pumpkin all night. They were awesome because the glow lasted for hours and we didn't have to worry about fire hazards (much to my dad's liking)!

It would be a shame to spend all of the time and effort cleaning out the pumpkins if we didn't save the seeds for a festive snack. 

Working off of a recommendation from the third Girls Team founding member and avid Make It Happen Monday reader, Claire, we tried a new recipe for seeds this year. After we washed the seeds, we coated them in salt, melted butter and worcestershire. 

We baked the pumpkin seeds for 90 minutes at 250 degrees. They came out crunchy, but not dry and the worcestershire added a unique, pleasant kick! We were happily impressed! 

Traditions are what make Halloween so special in our house, but adding new updates or twists each year add fun and adventure. So with that, we hope you are all having a wonderful, spooky, haunted Halloween! 

Thanks to our friend and reader Elysha who made this glitter pumpkin for us. It's a real pumpkin covered with glue and glitter. What a cute idea! 

Apples to Apples

We are lucky enough to live so close to Apple Hill, which is just east of Placerville, where there are acres and acres of apple orchards. One Girls Team member was lucky enough to head up the hill and return home with almost 50 apples!!

With so many apples to work with, the Girls Team decided to make TWO delicious treats tonight - homemade apple sauce and Apple Pie Pops!


We started with the Apple Pie Pops. Following this recipe, we had no trouble making the perfect pops with a flakey crust and warm apple-cinnamon filling.

The best kitchen tool, chopped 5 apples in minutes!

Apples, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar...

In the future, we would use thicker sticks or place them at the very top of the dough. After filling and baking, the pop was a bit too top heavy to be supported by the skinny lollipop sticks. 

Apple pie filling!!

In addition to a circular cookie cutter, we used a leaf-shaped one for Fall.

Finished product.

Success!! Because the pie pops themselves were too heavy for some of the sticks, the Girls Team plans to bake these without sticks for Thanksgiving. Tiny treats in place of traditional pie :)

Next up: Homemade Apple Sauce!

Even though the peeling and slicing of 16 apples was a bit tedious, this recipe made sweet, cinnamon flavored apple sauce in less than 45 minutes. All of the ingredients get thrown in one pot, sit over the stove for a half hour, and then mashed with a potato masher while hot. Simple, but incredible!

Jonathan and Gravenstein apples.

Brown sugar and a cinnamon stick. 

 Simmering and smelling great!

At first we were concerned about the left over liquid when the apple sauce was done cooking, but after mashing it down, the sauce was the perfect consistency. 

The recipe recommends eating the apple sauce with vanilla ice cream, we were too excited to try it so we just ate it straight from the pot. We plan to pour it on our oatmeal tomorrow morning for breakfast :)

Chicks with Sticks

The Girls Team has been knitting for years. We have basic knitting techniques down for scarves, but this Fall we are trying new things with socks, cowls, and even a scarflette in the works! 

Knitting from a pattern can sometimes feel like trying to decipher another language: knit, purl, slip stich - just to name a few! So for our first knitting project of the season, we are sticking to what we know and completing our current projects...

The Chicks with Sticks Guide to Knitting and various yarn samples. 

My current scarf, a combination of knitting and purling. 

The softest yarn ever.

My mom's blue and white scarf-in-progress.

An up close view :)

Stay tuned and follow Make It Happen Mondays to see how our first Fall scarves turn out! 

First Fall Meal

It rained all day, which would have been a huge bummer had we not planned the perfect warm, rich fall dinner for our first Make It Happen Monday event! The Girls Team decided on a White Bean Chili recipe from the kitchen of Paula Deen (recipe here) because how could that possibly be bad?! Creamed Corn Bread courtesy of Alton Brown (recipe here) perfectly complimented our chili.