Dr. Seuss's Birthday - Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is Dr. Seuss's birthday, and I think it's a great excuse to add a little fun to my kids' breakfast, lunch and snack-time adventures.

At our house, we start Dr. Seuss's birthday with green eggs and ham for breakfast.  I suppose I could puree some spinach to make the eggs green, but I take the easy way and add blue food coloring to the eggs before I scramble them and, Voila!, green eggs (also a great example of primary and secondary colors for the kids).  I buy one of those packaged ham steaks (that, yes, I'm sure is loaded with nitrates and other bad chemicals, but it looks so awesome next to the green scrambled eggs) and serve it up alongside the green eggs.  The kids love it...of course, for weeks after they beg and plead for all sorts of strange colored scrambled eggs.  Alas, it's a once a year event.

Keeping with the Dr. Seuss theme for lunch, I make the kids "Plain-Belly Peanut Butter Sandwiches" and "Star-Belly Jelly Sandwiches" (from The Sneetches).  I use small cocktail bread to make the sandwiches a little more fun.  Plain-Belly Sandwiches are simply peanut butter sandwiches.  To make Star-Belly Jelly Sandwiches, I spread the jelly on the bottom half of the sandwich, cut a small star out of the top piece of bread, and assemble the sandwich so the jelly shows through the cut-out star.  I serve Goldfish crackers in a small, clear glass fishbowl (super cheap at Michael's, AC Moore, Hobby Lobby).  We have Pink Ink (pink lemonade) to drink (from the Yink who likes to drink pink ink in One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish).

Later in the day, we have ABC cut-out cookies for a snack (from the Dr. Seuss ABC book).

I haven't come up with a fun dinner idea based on a Dr. Seuss book, so I guess I'm going to have to keep reading to find some ideas.  I did see a great idea for red and white striped Jello in a clear glass that looks like The Cat in the Hat's hat.  It would make a great dessert.

Tomorrow - ideas for a Dr. Seuss Birthday Party - not a Dr. Seuss themed party, but a party to celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday.  Easy, fun, and no need to write thank you notes since there are no gifts to bring/receive!

Cake Meets Cricut

A friend of mine asked me to make dessert for her Euchre party last weekend.  Since two of her guests have celiac disease, my standard cupcake fare was off the table (and I wasn't quite ready to experiment with gluten-free flours).  She told me she usually served fresh fruit, but really wanted to serve something chocolatey and sweet, and was thinking about flourless chocolate cake.

I first checked my Martha Stewart Baking Handbook, but couldn't find a recipe.  I then headed over to Smitten Kitchen (http://smittenkitchen.com/), where I found a link to a flourless chocolate cake on Epicurious (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Flourless-Chocolate-Cake-with-Chocolate-Glaze-5872).  The original recipe called for a chocolate glaze, but I opted to skip it.

The caked turned out great, but it looked a little sad sitting there all alone on the cardboard circle.  It needed to be jazzed up a bit, but remain gluten free.  What to do, what to do?  My friend had suggested some sort of card-themed decorations, but I was a bit worried about sprinkles and gluten and cross contamination.  Hmmm... 

Then I remembered that my Old West Cricut cartridge had poker-related shapes.  I found this great hand of aces, that I thought would make a great pattern for the cake.  I cut out the largest possible card my machine would make (5 1/2 inches).  I used this as a stencil, and sprinkled powdered sugar on the cake.  It turned out great...at least I think it did.  If I make it again, I would first brush a very light sugar-water coating on the cake so the powdered sugar would stick a bit better.