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This is one of those simple cake recipes that will surely leave the tummies of all who eat it happy and satisfied. Easy cake recipes that are both easy and delicious can be hard to find. This Citrus Almond Champagne Cake is both. Serve it a baby shower, birthday or dinner party or like I did: Just because.



After reading about the Country Cook’s yummy 7-Up Cake, I was truly inspired. Her cake looks and sounds delicious. I was mulling over what I could do to add a “twist”. Not that it needed anything, but I wanted to make it my own. Enter champagne. We have had plenty of strawberries in the house lately (Thank you early strawberry season in California). So I thought “Ohh! Strawberries and Champagne Cake.”
Only one problem: It’s been done. A LOT.
But I still wanted to bake a cake with champagne in it. It sounded fun and I wanted to see how it would taste...What to do...I decided to blend the cake recipes together and create my own version. One with less ingredients. Because I had never made it before I wasn’t quite sure how it was going to turn out.

Here’s the recipe:


Citrus Almond Champagne Cake
Ingredients:

• 1 box white cake mix
• 1 cup/8oz. Orange Almond Champagne (or Sparkling Wine) The brand I got is made by Wilson Creek, called “Orange Mimosa”.
• 3 eggs

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
• Mix Ingredients in a stand mixer or bowl and pour into a greased bundt pan
• Bake at 350 according to the box directions (our oven is finicky and ended up being done at 30 mintues)

Allow to cool, before you add the frosting. If you don’t the heat from the cake will absorb the frosting (not necessarily bad I guess).


Citrus Champagne Frosting

• 1/4 cup of orange juice
• 1/4 cup champagne (can omit and sub in more orange juice)
• 1 lb of powdered sugar (I made mine with about 3/4 of a lb.)

**In a bowl, pour in champagne and OJ, slowly add in the powdered sugar and whisk as you go, mixing it to the desired consistency.
**Pour frosting over cooled bundt cake. Top with chopped almonds if desired.

Tips:

• If you have any frosting left over, serve in a small bowl along side the champagne cake (warmed perhaps?), so you can pour on more if desired. (I love frosting).
• The alcohol is not necessary for this simple cake recipe, so if you want to make a more kid-friendly version you can make the 7-Up cake I linked to above, or substitute sparkling cider for the champagne (Cream soda might be yummy).

I am guest posting today over at San Diego Deals and Steals with my recipe for healthy shamrock-shaped homemade tortilla chips (We made good use of those spinach and herb tortillas! ). Hope you enjoy!

***If you decide to pin this recipe, PLEASE click over and pin from San Diego Deals and Steals, and not this post out of courtesy to that site. Thank you!

• Spinach & Herb Flour Tortillas (We used Mission Brand)
• Cheese of your choice, shredded or thinly sliced
• Heart-shaped mini food cutter
• Knife/or Pizza cutter

  
  

  Here’s the “How to”

There you have it, a green shamrock quesadilla lunch perfect for the kids on St. Patrick's Day

We are nursing some serious sickness over here in the Muffin Tin Household. Definitely on the mend, but the last week has been crazy.

As St. Patrick’s Day and spring approaches, I though it would be fun to celebrate with a rainbow fruits and veggies themed Muffin Tin Snack. Oh how we love fresh fruit!




In this muffin tin snack: Red Strawberries, Orange Carrot sticks, Yellow Banana slices, Green Cucumbers, Blue Blueberries, and Purple Plums


I used Martha Stewart’s delightful rainbow colored paper treat wrappers from Michael’s.




Get your Rainbow on with these fun activities and products:
-Inspire kids to eat from the Rainbow every day with fun Today I Ate The Rainbow Chart
-Play the Crunch-a-Color game
-Make a finger print rainbow
-Paint a water color rainbow craft with Make and Takes

Oh Thin Mints……


Recipe:
(adjust ingredients to your taste)

• 6-7 ice cubes (crush them first for a faster blend)
• Cover ice cubes with milk (about 3/4 cup-1 cup)
• Add 3 scoops vanilla (or chocolate) ice cream
• Add a layer of chocolate syrup
• Add a 1/8 cup of sugar (optional)
• Cover that with 3-4 Thin Mint Cookies
• Blend on high until smooth and creamy.

Yup. It’s awesome. Not too minty, not too chocolate-y.

I hope there are Thin Mints in Heaven.

Have any fun Girl Scout Cookie Recipes?

Playing By The Book is having an Edible Book Festival!!
Special thanks to Jo at A Bit of This and That for sharing about it. It looks like loads of fun and a great way to bring books and food together! It can be anything (although I think it has to be new) as long as it’s edible. There are several important details for entering, so be sure to head over to check it out!


For more details, visit Playing By The Book or click on the picture to take you there

Simple and fun butterfly kids lunch as we patiently wait for the advent of Spring



Muffin cups from the Target “Dollar Spot.
Butterfly sandwich cut using The Lunch Punch Brand sandwich cutters We love them!
For more Muffin Tin Meals, visit MuffinTinMom.com

I invited Emily to guest post today and share with you about her FREE Muffin Tin Meal planning page. I know you will love it, as well as Second Story Window as much as I do! It's great for tracking your little eater's likes and dislikes as well as brainstorming themed muffin tin meal ideas.  I'll let Emily tell you more.
Hi Muffin Tin Mom readers! My name is Emily. My sister Heidi and I run Second Story Window, a printable educational game shop. We also blog ideas and printables on our (new and improved) blog.

Michelle asked me to share with you a muffin tin meal planner that Heidi came up with. For Christmas she gave me the most adorable muffin tin meal kit. My daughter is only 22 months, so we are new to the muffin tin meal world. The kit was just what I needed to get started!

With the kit, Heidi included the muffin tin meal planner she created, which she had printed up into a planning book for me. Here's what it looks like.

• I can plan out what I want to go in each compartment of the tin and also keep track of which food groups I'm hitting. 
• I can make any notes on the side for presentation ideas or reports of how the meal went over. 
• There is also a handy way to note what your child thought of the food. 
• I can mark a smiley face for foods my daughter loved, a check mark for foods she tried, and an x for foods she didn't even touch. I find it so useful to be able to look back and see what foods I haven't offered my daughter in awhile and which ones she did and didn't like recently.

Here's an example of a recent meal for my daughter.



And here's the planning page in action. I forgot to photograph the page before I added her opinions but I think you can get the idea!


Now, I can remember that while she loved the applesauce, she probably wasn't quite ready for it since she enjoyed spooning it over all the rest of the food much more than actually eating it!

Come over to our blog and download the meal planner page and try it out yourself. We'd love to hear how it works for you and see how you use it!

The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear
Themed Muffin Tin Meal



Served in a muffin tin with muffin liners with strawberries on them.

The Little Mouse has heard that the big hungry bear wants to eat his red ripe strawberry. What will he do? I just adore this book and so do my kids.  Don't have the book? You can watch a video of this delightful children's book.


Other Ideas:
To make a strawberry mouse visit Little Nummies
Make a hand print strawberry craft with Meet The Dubiens
Big Hungry Bear Book Activities from Making Learning Fun

*To find more muffin tin meal theme ideas, visit the themes page and click over to the FAQ page for more info on muffin tin meals. Join in Muffin Tin Monday blog link up every Monday right here at Muffintinmom.com

 The included manual has a few recipes to get you started and they taste great! The recipes are essentially "from scratch" and you can make substitutions for gluten free and more. One of the best things about the maker is that the donuts are baked and not fried. So, if I am going to splurge on a treat like this for the kids, that's a bonus.

Muffin Tin Girl and I mixed everything together, but when it came time to pipe the dough in the maker, it was just too hot. So, I did that part. I guess you could say that's one of the only draw backs.

Tip: Babycakes recommends using a plastic bag to "pipe" the mix into the maker. In my humble opinion this is an eassential step.
Tip: They aren't going to taste like traditional donuts because they aren't fried, but MAN are they good



.

Muffin Tin Girl made received some fun cake decorating supplies for Christmas. She made us a cake today and decorated it herself. I helped her with technique a little, but she did most of it! It turned out great! She loves cake decorating shows and wants to be a baker when she grows up. Only one problem, she wants to bake a cake every day, and there's only so much cake we can eat! And it's not exactly healthy either, but it was a fun treat.



Hope you are enjoying the holidays!

A Christmas twist on the beloved apples snack with caramel dipping sauce. Changing how you plate up your toddler, preschooler and child's food can be a creative way to inject a little fun into mealtime.

*first published on December 20th, 2010

To make this easy Christmas Rudolf Reindeer snack for kids, you'll need:

Antlers: 2 pretzels with the rounded edges bitten cut off
Face: 1 piece of bread cut in a circle shape with the Pampered Chef Cut N Seal and covered in peanut butter or your favorite spread (Maybe Nutella or Hummus as a healthier alternative)
Eyes: Chocolate chips
Nose: Marachino cherry
Mouth: red sprinkles/jimmies

Assemble as shown and enjoy.
Happy Snacking!

Peppermint is one of my favorite Christmas holiday flavors. And if you love peppermint like I do, then this simple peppermint chocolate milkshake is sure to please. Made with peppermint candies and hot cocoa mix, this treat is full of zing and pep.

What You'll Need:

5-6 ice cubes
1/4 cup Fresh and Easy Peppermint Hot Cocoa Mix
1-2 scoops vanilla ice cream
1/2 cup milk
10 peppermint candies (circle kind) Crushed, 2 set aside for topping

Directions:
Place ingredients in a blender and blend on med-high until runs smooth.
Serve in a low tumbler with crushed peppermint on top.

What on your favorite holiday flavor list?

Welcome to Muffin Tin Monday! Christmas is fast approaching. Providing healthy lunch for toddlers, preschoolers and kids can be a challenge during the holidays. Hopefully, Muffin Tin Meals are helping you feed those little tummies.

Ours is a not-so-Christmasy Christmas Muffin Tin Meal this week. But I couldn't help myself! We just recieved these cutie patootie sandwich punches from the wonderful folks at The Lunch Punch. If you are thinking about a fun gift for yourself or for that little chef in your life, then this is it! We tried their new Sweet line. It has ice cream cone, birthday cake and cupcake sandwich punches.