Halloween Spooky Eye Pretzel Bark

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

With so many fun things I came across this season I had a hard time deciding what to make! I sent cookies for the kids to eat in Trevor's class. But I wanted to send them all home with a little something.

When I found the Spooky Eyes Pretzel Bark on Cookies and Cups website I thought it would be perfect and very simple! I was right about perfect, but WRONG about simple. LOL.

Very few ingredients which seemed simple. You take pretzels and lay them out on a cookie sheet.

Then you combine butter and brown sugar and bring to boil for 2 minutes.

This is where I went wrong.

And the reason why I had to go for try #2 with this recipe. I didn't boil long enough....and the sugar didn't dissolve leaving it sticky when it was all said and done. I thought that might have been the problem, but wrote Shelly about her recipe. She said the 2 minutes should start AFTER the sugar was dissolved. OH....me not being the best baker didn't think about this when I was making it...that information would have been helpful. But I'm not quite sure how to tell when the sugar was dissolved in the first place.

If anyone wants to write me and let me know - I'd love that information! I didn't want to boil it too long for fear it might burn and get too sticky to pour out.

Once you have this step all perfected (on my 2nd try I did okay!), you pour this over the pretzels and bake for 10 min.
Then melt white chocolate and pour over that. And do the same with a layer of milk chocolate. I doubled the milk chocolate to have enough to spread over.

Then you can garnish with pretty much anything you want!!! For the Halloween effect I liked what Cookies and Cups did for the Spooky eyes - using oreos. Here is the "Bark" before it's all in pieces. I have to say breaking the bark was not easy....It would be ideal for every piece to have an oreo with eyes...but I didn't exactly know how to make that happen. Any ideas there?

Here's a side view of the bark.


Hope the kids like this creation...turned out to be more of something I wanted to tackle since I didn't get it right the first time. I was even prepared to have to try for attempt 3. Luckily I didn't have to!


HAPPY HALLOWEEN.
And HAPPY BAKING.

Trevor's 5th Birthday

HAPPY 5TH BIRTHDAY TO TREVOR!
My Baby is not so much a baby anymore...being 5 and starting Kindergarten this week. Even though he Birthday is not until August 30, we had his party this weekend. And it was PERFECT. Great weather, great friends and family and a great time all the way around. This year our theme was a bit different - instead of just fire trucks, Trevor wanted police cars too!!! LOL. Makes my life pretty easy when he sticks to the same theme each year! And he did NOT want a cake. Only cupcakes. Even better since I didn't know how I was going to make a police car and fire truck cake.....To keep with the theme I decided to make miniature cookies to put on the cupcakes. Being my speciality that was the easiest way I could think of to incorporate our theme!

Below is Trevor sneaking a cookie Pre-party and who am I to say no on his Birthday party day?

Here is a platter of the finished product before Trevor blows out his candle.

We had yummy Oreo Cookie cupcakes with blue frosting. A police car cookie was put on top each one of these.
The Oreo cupcakes were the favorite and they were yummy. The recipe can be found here from Beantown Baker. Super easy to make and each one had an oreo cookie layer at the bottom.

When I asked Trevor what flavor of cupcake he wanted his request was for Root Beer. I found a Root Beer Float Cupcake Recipe on How Sweet it Is website. The funny thing about this- when we had cupcakes at his party Trevor didn't want ANY (I think he was just anxious to get to swimming). And then when we got home he requested an Oreo one for dessert!!! TREVOR - I made those for you! LOL


Cupcakes are harder for me to make than sugar cookies. I struggle with the icing portion of that but finally was able to master that on these I think.....I'm not too fond of that frosting anyway since being made out of Crisco it is such a MESS to clean up! Here are the finished product cupcakes with little fire hydrants and police cars on top. I had to order those little cutters specially for Trevor's party...but you didn't' really have to twist my arm! And those little cookies took much longer to make than I thought. Being so small and having lots of details took patience.
Here's a close up of the miniature cookies. I thought it was funny when Pat made the comment that the little cookies were soooo yummy...they were made with my same recipe as the big ones!
As favors to take home I made Big police cars and fire trucks to put in the kids goodie bags. They got one of each all bagged up and ready to eat. Plus lots of other police and fire things. It's good to have connections in those departments to get some free goodies for the kids!
The big fire trucks and police cars had a lot of detail on them too! And then of course I had to put a 5 on everything in honor of our 5th Birthday party!
While I was at it I thought I would make a few helmets and police badges too to have on a platter to serve. I definitely got into the theme this year with all my special treats!
Below is Trevor with his Oreo cupcake!

The Birthday Boy blowing out his Cupcake candle!

I don't have much going on after this so I can take a deep breath and maybe a break for awhile! It's been a super busy past few weeks baking. At one point I had absolutely NO room in our big deep freeze because I had so many cookies bagged up in there! But it has been fun to do all these for some great occasions!!

HAPPY BAKING.