I came across the most delightful recipe that I just HAD to share with you here. This would be easy and fun to make with your grandchildren.

Cake in a Cup – Variation 1
Spray a large microwaveable mug with cooking spray.  Then, in the mug combine:
5 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt

Stir and then add the following:

1 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons apple sauce (or can use milk)
1/4 tsp white vinegar

Stir thoroughly and place mug in the microwave.  Cook on full power for 1-2 minutes, watching all the time.

When it’s done, place the mug upside down on a plate for a couple of minutes.  Then pick both the mug and the plate up and give them a couple of shakes to get the cake out. If it doesn’t come out easily, that’s okay.  Just scoop it out and put on a plate — or just eat directly from the cup.

Once you’ve made this recipe, experiment with it!!!  Add choc chips, M&Ms, chopped nuts or use orange juice for the liquid.  Top with ice cream or whipped topping.

This makes a large serving — too much for me to eat in one sitting.  If you’re making this with a small grandchild, one cake in a cup will be sufficient for both of you to eat.

Cake in a Cup – Variation 2

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil

Mix flour, sugar, and cocoa.  Add 1 egg.  Pour in milk and oil and mix well.  Cook in the microwave for 3 minutes on maximum power.  After it has stopped rising, shake cake out onto plate and eat.

Cake in a Cup – Variation 3 (This is my favorite version!!!) 

1 box of cake mix any flavor
1 (4 serving size) instant pudding mix (not sugar free), any flavor

Place dry cake mix and dry pudding mix into a large bowl and blend well with a whisk. This will be about 4-4 1/2 cups dry mix and will make 8-9 cake-in-a-cup mixes.

Generously spray inside of microwaveable mug with cooking spray. Put 1/2 cup of the dry mix into the cup. Add 1 egg, 1 tablespoon oil and 1 tablespoon water. Mix 15 seconds, carefully mixing in all the dry mix. Microwave on full power 2 minutes.

Flavor suggestions:
lemon cake mix- lemon pudding
Orange Supreme cake mix – vanilla pudding
white cake mix-vanilla pudding
yellow cake mix – pistachio pudding
strawberry cake mix- vanilla pudding
Devil’s Food cake mix- chocolate pudding
pineapple cake mix- coconut pudding
butterscotch cake mix- butterscotch pudding
German Chocolate cake mix – chocolate pudding
white cake mix – banana pudding

Let it cool slightly and then eat directly from the cup.  Add a scoop of ice cream, strawberries, bananas, whipped cream, coconut, or chopped nuts. Be creative!

This is a perfect recipe to make with your grandchildren.  Here are some ideas for when you can make this recipe:

• On a lazy Saturday afternoon when you don’t really have anything planned to do
• On Super Bowl Sunday (before the game starts or at half time)
• After playing games together with your grandchildren
• When you have the munchies but you don’t want to spend the time to make a whole cake (and you wanna eat something RIGHT NOW!)
• On your grandchild’s ‘six-month birthday’ (when his birthday is still half a year away)
• On Ground Hog’s day (because it’s too stormy and cold to play outside)
• When you want to ‘teach’ a young grandchild some culinary skills
• On any day of the week that ends with a Y
• Just whenever!

This is such a fun and easy cake to make, this just might become a ‘regular’ on your menu.

Bon appetit!
Digi-Gram

A children’s song says, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands . . .”

Well, I say, “If you’re happy and you know it, create a happiness book!”

What is a happiness book? I’m glad you asked.  I’m going to give you the basic idea and then I want you to personalize it.  Make it fit with the grandchildren you have.  Make it fit your circumstances.

The basic idea is to create a book of things that make you and your grandchildren happy.  For instance, everyday for a week or month (or once a week for a year or whatever time frame you select) write down an experience that you had that day that has made you happy.  Or, write down something that you are grateful for.  Write about people you are grateful for and why.  Write about the fun things that you did that day.  Write about the simple pleasures in life.

Where applicable, include photos.  For example, if your grandson was grateful for his puppy, include a photo of him playing with his puppy alongside his comment about why he is grateful for his puppy.  If there is a beautiful sunset, grab your camera, snap a picture, and write how the sunset brought a moment of happiness into your life.  Or, instead of including photographs, have your grandchild simply draw something that goes along with her happiness entry.  If your grandchild is very young and if you live near your grandchild, you could get together once a week to help her create her weekly entry for the book.

After you and your grandchild (or grandchildren) have written an entry for the specified length of time (e.g. once a week for a year), turn your entries and photos into a book.  Blurb.com is an excellent site that helps you create and print up your book.  They have free and easy to use software that is compatible both for Mac and PC computers.  (This will help you with your New Year’s Resolution to improve your technology skills!)

If you don’t want to do anything digital, you might want to purchase a blank book or a spiral notebook to put your happiness entries in.  Here are some ideas of things you could include in your happiness book:

• eating an ice cream
• reading a book together
• having a sleep over at Grandma’s house
• laying on the lawn and watching the clouds go by
• feeding the ducks at a local park
• eating cake on your birthday
• running through the sprinklers
• eating watermelon
• going to the movies

(Why do my ideas seem to be summertime ideas???  Is it because this 10 degree Fahrenheit weather makes me yearn for warmer times??)

Your happiness book will be a keepsake that you and your grandchild will want to read over and over to remember the things that brought you happiness during a slice of your life together.  Make it as simple or as elaborate as you want.  The main purpose is to find joy in your journey through life, to save it, and then savor it.

Digi-Gram
Grandma Ideas.com Grandparents having fun with grandchildren

If you have decided to set a New Year’s Resolution to do something new with technology like I suggested in my last post, I’ve got a great place for you to start. Comic Life.

Comic Life is an inexpensive software ($25) that works both on Macs and Windows that lets you make a comic book out of digital pictures.  You can add comment bubbles (e.g. “Help, save me from the big bad meanies!!”) or add the bam-wham-pow-kaboom bubbles that adds sound effects to the action of the plot.

You can add text boxes  Rotate the boxes.  Skew the boxes.  Manipulate them to your heart’s content.  Change fonts.  Change colors.  Use templates.  Change templates.  Create templates. Use styles.  Change styles.  And all of this is VERY easy to do.

You can print your work and take it to your local copy center to get it spiral bound into an ‘official’ book.  Or just staple the pages together — which is cheaper if this horrible economy is pinching your purse.  Or, you can save your work as an HTML page to post on a website.  You can also save it as an AVI movie and post to your blog or send the movie as an e-mail attachment.

I’ve made two sample pages so you can see what the end product can look like.  Comic Life Page 1 and Comic Life Page 2.

So, grab a grandchild (or two or three), hunker down with your computer, and let your creativity go wild as you create your own personalized comic book.

Enjoying the comic life (both digital and real),
Digi-Gram

Grandma Ideas:Grandparents having fun with grandchildren

Resolutions.  Everybody’s making them. Adamantly.  “This year, I AM going to exercise every day!!”  “I AM going to lose weight!!”  “I AM going to get out of debt!!”   “I AM going to de-junk my garage!!”  Resolutions.  Firm resolve in January.  Fizzed out by the end of February like a carbonated drink gone flat. That’s the old way of making resolutions.

Have you noticed that New Year’s Resolutions are usually based on what people feel they OUGHT to do.  Not necessarily what they WANT to do.  This year, do something different.  Instead of making all of those I-oughtta-make-this-resolution-because-it’s-good-for-me-even-though-I-really-don’t-want-to-do-it kinds of resolutions, set FUN ones.  Ones that you WANT to do.  Ones that you will enjoy.  Ones that you eagerly look forward to doing.  That’s the new way of making resolutions.

Here are a two fun resolution ideas that also involve your grandchildren.  After all, that’s what this site is all about.

Resolution:  Party more!  Over the holidays, we played two new card games: Wizzrds and Category 5.  Wizzards is a game similar to Rook with some Wizard cards and Jester cards thrown in.  In Category 5, you play cards in numerical order while trying to get the least amount of points.  Both games are easy to learn and would be something that tween and teen-aged grandchildren would enjoy playing.  So, invite your older grandchildren over for a card party and some munchies.  (The munchies can be healthy if you really MUST set one of those health resolutions. . .)  Have a Just Because party (just because it’s January 21st or February 2 or whatever date you pick.)  Have a tea party. Have a Ground Hog’s Day party.  A dress up party.  A pizza party.  A night at the movies party.  Just party. You get the idea.  Life is too short to go too long between parties. And of course the parties are to be held with grandchildren.

Resolution: Do something fun with technology that you haven’t done before. Learn how to use Skype (computer to computer phone calls).  Buy a web camera then use it to tell your far away grandchildren bedtime stories or to have a sing-along with them.  Or, take a digital picture of your grandchildren and send it to Big Huge Labs to be turned into a jigsaw puzzle.  Then, invite your grandchildren over to put the puzzle together and to have some munchies.  (Of the healthy kind . . .) Or, using the video mode on your digital camera, make a short movie of you and grandpa singing happy birthday to a grandchild and then e-mail the movie to your grandchild on her birthday.  (And then eat some healthy munchies . . .)  Learn how to do digital scrapbooking and put a scrapbook together with pictures of you and your grandchildren.

Make your resolutions FUN to increase the likelihood that you will do them.  And, if they include activities with your grandchildren, all the better.

Here’s to a prosperous — and FUN — New Year!
Digi-Gram

Grandma Ideas:Grandparents having fun with grandchildren