My New Year’s resolution is to post fewer photos of baked goods…but until then, I remain in the kitchen until holiday orders are complete.  And since I am filled with Mommy guilt, I’ve included my daughter in the rolling dough madness. A fun year end project with your children…

Having children re-awakens dormant creativity and imagination.  And lately, I’ve reconnected with my inner actress.  Improvisation theatre in the playroom. We’ve got the theatre.  And we sell tickets to hundreds of stuffed animals, taking turns performing to a packed house.  There is always applause and, quite often, moral lessons snuck in for added value.  Fun. Old Fashion. Entertainment.  Always helpful when you are looking for ways to spend quality time with your little ones.

One of my daughter’s favorite activities is stamping.  She has a nice little collection of them but gets bored with images quickly.  So Sunday in the middle of the one hundreth Hello Kitty stamp (on paper and my arms, no less), I remembered making potato stamps in school.   So I ran to the fridge after some spuds and we got started.

But what I didn’t like about the project was carving the image with a knife into the potato.  My daughter is very insistent that she does everything alone when crafting.  I draw the line at knives.  And then I remembered the hundreds of cookie cutters I have. Et Viola!

How to:  If you have any cookie cutters (or even the shapes that come with play dough), just force them through the potato half and out.  Dip the shape in the stamp pad (or paint) and you can create lots of lovely patterns.

My ten month old son wiggles his fingers when he is near my laptop, a baby ready to surf the net. My daughter, by simply observing the movements of my fingers, cracked the password to my i-phone on the fourth try. Last week when I picked her up from school she inquired after her email address. Techies in diapers.

And while I can hardly imagine how my mother was able to leave me with a babysitter before cell phones (imagine only a list of emergency numbers on the refridgerator) and I cannot live without my internet, I often get rather frustrated with the tendency technology has to render us ever more impatient individuals. To think I used to have pen pals. The thrill of receiving a letter in the mail is an unknown pleasure to most young people.

So today after receiving three calls from the same number on my cell phone in the span of seven minutes (while I was in the bathroom, no less), I decided to turn back the clock and do something old fashioned with my three year old, who is also learning patience. When she arrived home from school, I began explaining the process of letter writing. I don’t know if she understood. But we wrote letters to some of her favorite people and included her school photo. She also wrote a letter to herself. (I thought it a good idea for her to actually receive something too.) And then we went on a field trip to the local post office.

After she proudly placed the stamps on her letters, I asked the post office employee when her loved ones could expect the letters. “Normally one week to the USA and 2 days within Sao Paulo. But since the postal employees are on strike, we cannot really give you an estimated time frame!”

She didn’t really understand the reply (strike?) but calmly nodded (while I got frustrated). When will the letters arrive?

Lessons in patience–for the both of us.

PS: To see this text in Portuguese, visit Pais e Filhos. I am writing a monthly column there!

Little Fairies

You will need:  wooden skewers, raw wooden beads, fabric scraps, tassles, feathers, glue gun, rope, scissors, and markers

How to:  Force the tassles through the top hole of the wooden bead using a knitting needle or piece of wire, etc.  and stick the wooden skewer through the bottom hole, cutting it to the size you prefer.  Using your glue gun, glue pieces of rope to the skewers for the arms and legs.  Cut your fabric and sew it by hand around the neck of your fairy and glue feathers to the back.  Using your marker or paint, add your facial expression.  And if you like, using a fine toothed comb you can “backcomb” the yarn (and even cut it) to create different hairdos.

Fairy dust not included!

My client wanted a romantic wedding cake. And I found this great cake and tutorial here.

It wasn’t as hard as it looks. The frosting is a bit too sweet but I tried my own buttercream recipe and the flowers wilted. Solution: This will be the cake on the sweets table with a “bolo gostoso” in the kitchen to serve the guests.

I use a lot of fondant in my work.  And really there is no medium quite like it.  It can be plied into any shape, takes food coloring well, and dries smooth, hard and pretty. But the taste?  Cavity inspiring sweet.  I don’t blame clients when they scrape it off the cake and throw away the sculpted animals (that took hours to make).  It really is sickeningly sugary for most adults.

In searching for a substitute, I have been spending some time shaping marzipan.  It doesn’t really come close to the visual perfection of fondant.  But it tastes wonderful and can be pretty, too.  I’ve made some flowers to put on top of a cake that is in the oven.

The recipe:

1 can of condensed milk

3 cups of blanched almonds finely ground

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon almond extract

4 cups of sifted confectioners sugar

Place your condensed milk, almonds, and lemon juice in a large pot and simmer, mixing constantly until it pulls away from the bottom of the pan (like brigadeiros).  Place in a large recipient to cool and then add your almond extract and confectioners sugar and knead until all the sugar is absorbed.  Store in an airtight container for 2 months.

To make these flowers:  Dye your marzipan with food coloring, roll the dough with a rolling pin and cut out your flower shape with a cookie cutter.  (Tip:  I let mine dry in egg crates so that the petals would curve up.)

You are ready to decorate your cake (and nobody will scrape away your delicious decorations).  Yum!

Spicy Almonds

4 Cups of Raw Unsalted Almonds
2 Teaspoons of Ground Cumin
1/2 Teaspoon of Garlic Powder
1/2 Teaspoon of Pepper
1 Teaspoon of Salt
6 Teaspoons of Olive Oil
1/2 Teaspoon of Tabasco (Optional)

Place all of your spices in a bowl and mix, set aside.
In a dry frying pan over medium heat toast your **almonds, mixing constantly for a good 4 minutes. Transfer the toasted almonds to a bowl. Put your olive oil in the frying pan and heat, adding your spice mixture and then the almonds. Coat well. Remove from heat and spread on a cookie sheet to dry.

Honestly, this takes less than ten minutes and prettily packaged is a great gift to take to your hostess…or serve at your next cocktail hour.

**You cannot beat the zona cerealista in São Paulo for well priced grains…one kilo of your favorite nuts are half the price of the supermarket. Try Emporio Roots.

Enjoy!

Did you wake up this morning to your cell phone alarm and the rush to get your child fed and off to school on time?  July vacation is over.  But if you are like me, you are vowing to spend more time out of the city second semester.  A craft to take along for the next weekend away at the beach…

Sand Art

Drop a bit of food coloring in a cup of stand.  Stir and fill your bottles.  Tip:  Use a bottle with a small opening and a popsicle stick to pour the sand in…the project will keep them busy for much longer!  We didn’t have lids so we sealed our art shut with play dough.

Pretty!

Last week was one of those weeks.  My 7 month old son got conjunctivitis in both eyes.  A pipe burst in my kitchen and flooded the apartment below.  My daughter had a mega scandalous temper tantrum in the parking gararge of the supermarket.  I was the classic harried housewife wearing my pajamas too late into the day, seemingly spinning circles and feeling like I could not get a thing done with Georgia on school vacation and moping bored around the house while Sebastian fussed and pawed at his eyes.

Must. Leave. Town. NOW!  On an invitation from a good friend in the same situation, we headed to the beach:  five kids five and under.  ”Let’s go!” said Tati.  ”Forget the supermarket, we can have Pão de Açucar deliver.  Bring your laptop.  I’ll bring mine. We can try to work.”  Children in the company of other children usually rely a lot less on their Mommys–especially when there is grass, sand, and sea.

As I write this from the beach, I can tell you it is working thus far.  Naturally, we have had to negotiate misunderstandings, wipe noses, and stop what we are doing constantly.  But in good company.  And thank god for Pão de Açucar!  Our groceries arrived on time, for certain.  But who could imagine that the boxes have been the toy highlight of the weekend?  Our husbands fashioned them into robots while we sipped on wine and laughed uncontrollably.

Everyone feeling better!

If wandering 25 de Março unnerves you but you like the idea of “DIY” children’s parties and saving money, I reccomend Loja Matsumoto.. You are certain to find everything for your festinha in one stop shopping.

Boas Compras!

It seems just about everyone is heading to Miami these days.  The Real is strong and who wants to pay the inflated prices of toys these days in Brazil?  For $7.99, you can buy this amazing “paint your own tea set” at one of my favorite chains:  World Market.

Perfect for quality time with your little one.  Simply paint and bake it in the oven to dry.  I wish I would have bought more than one…a great gift.

PS:  Georgia is in the “band-aid” phase…we had to take off four of them so that she could actually manipulate her paint brush!

I loved the toy art birthday party theme for a tiny tot turning one today…nothing of bichinhos, no!

Alice Abramo and I collaborated on the little “so ugly cute” toys, illustrated and molded to life in fondant….ready to take over the mesa de doces.

What noises do you think they make?