My husband and I spent the weekend in Salt Lake City. We did quite a bit of walking and it was chilly.

Chilly? Chilly? Who am I kidding? It was downright freezing cold.

It made me wish that we had some wassail to drink when we got back to the condo.

I have a wassail recipe that I want to share with you.  It is way easy to make — especially with grandchildren.

Wassail

2 cups Tang
1 3-oz. package pre-sweetened powdered lemonade Kool-Aid
1 1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl.  Mix well. Store in an airtight container.  When you want a drink, simply mix 2-3 teaspoons of the mix in one cup of hot water.

See?  I told you it was easy.

Your grandchild could give some of the wassail mix to a friend along with a fun mug.  Put the mix in a Ziplock bag and put the bag in the mug and wrap the mug in clear cellophane paper and add a bow.

Maybe you ought to double the recipe so that you can mix up some and drink with your grandchild when you are finished.

Yum!  Warm, cozy, and tasty.

My mouth waters.  My brain says, “I wanna eat, eat eat!”

“Tell that to my stomach,” I retort.  I have  just eaten.  My stomach is full.  It is satisfied.  I don’t need to eat.  (Key word here, folks, is need.)

Doesn’t this picture of the Peanut Butter Confetti Cake look absolutely divine?  Like you could eat the whole cake and be happy and content as a light breeze on a lovely summer day?

I want to thank Jo-Anna from A Pretty Life in the Suburbs for allowing me to use her photograph of her cake.  She is so kind and gracious.  And you just HAVE to make her confetti cake.  I recommend you make it thirty or forty times before attempting it with your  grandchildren.  Gotta make sure the recipe is tired and true, you know.

Actually, this ‘cake’ would be a snap to make with your grandkiddos.  You simply melt the butter, peanut butter, and butterscotch chips.  You let the mixture cool and then stir in the colored marshmallows.  Then stick it in the fridge.  Yum, yum, yum.  She has easy to follow directions and gorgeous pictures of the whole process.  I recommend that the next time you get together with your grandchildren, have a cooking fest and whip up some of this confetti cake.  Your little grandcooks will have fun making it and fun eating it.

(You might want to saunter around Jo-Anna’s site.  She has a coconut sugar scrub that would be fun to make and give to your teenaged granddaughters.  (Or for yourself.)   Maybe you might be interested in printing up a fun calendar for August for either you or a grandchild. She has five cute ones to choose from.  (Since she has had calendars for previous months, I’m assuming that she will have more for the coming months.  This is a site to keep on your radar.)

What easy-to-make recipes have you used with your grandchildren?

I hope all of you grandmothers had a delightful Mother’s Day.  I had a delightful time with our daughter and her family, my sister and her husband, and my mother.

My sister made a delightful and delicious marshmallow bouquet.  I was so enchanted with it that I thought I would share it here.  She assured me that even I could make these.  (I don’t know if she knows about my cake pop flops . . . )

She said that all she did was melt some dipping chocolate, put a sucker stick in a marshmallow, dip the marshmallow into the melted chocolate, dip the marshmallow end into white sprinkles, and tie a green ribbon on the sucker stick.  She put pieces of dipping chocolate in a bowl and stuck in the marshmallow ‘flowers’.  The chocolate pieces held the flowers upright to make the marshmallow bouquet.

If you wanted to make a spring bouquet (I am hoping that spring will make it to my neck of the woods sometime before I turn 95 years old), I thought that you could get different colors of dipping chocolate (yellow, pink, blue, orange) to make a bouquet of different colored ‘flowers.’  And, instead of using pieces of dipping chocolate in the bowl, you could use multi-colored candy like jelly beans or lemon drops or other candy to add color to your bouquet.  You could even use mini-marshmallows for baby flowers.

If you wanted a bouquet to match a holiday, use colors that are associated with that holiday.  Pink and white marshmallow flowers would look lovely for Valentine’s Day.  Green and white would be terrific for St. Patrick’s Day. Red, green, and white would be great for Christmas.  Red, white and blue would make a wonderful bouquet for the 4th of July.

This would be a great activity to do with grandchildren that are at least 8 years old.  They could insert the sticks into the marshmallows, roll them into the melted chocolate, and dip them into the sprinkles.

You can make these with your grandchildren and use the bouquet as a centerpiece for a family dinner or an activity with the grandchildren.  When you make them, make sure you make plenty for your bouquet and plenty to eat!

Back in the Dark Ages when my children were little, I would occasionally make suckers.  You know the kind. Sugar, water, corn syrup, and flavoring.  Boil to hard ball stage. Put in a metal sucker mold held around a sucker stick with an elastic band that you could barely see with a high powered magnifying lens.

So, when I saw the directions for these lollipops I was delighted.  Utterly!

The Decorated Cookie shared this idea on her site.  It is so clever.  So easy.  So colorful. Wish I had known how to make these when my kids were little!

All is not lost.  I can make them with my grandchildren.  (Or for them.  At this moment in time, they are just a tad too small to be cookin’ in the kitchen with grandma.)

These Easy Lollies are well, like their name implies.  Easy to make.  Simply put Jolly Ranchers on a cookie sheet, bake them for a few minutes to melt them, and then press the sucker stick in them after you take them out of the oven.  Click here to read her directions. (The Decorated Cookie gave me permission to use her picture.  She is so sweet to allow me to use it!  I graciously thank her!)

Imagine the fun flavored suckers you can make by mixing different flavored Jolly Ranchers.  I think they will be a hit with my grandchildren.  (If I don’t eat them all myself . . .)

If you have grandchildren that live far away, print up the directions on how to make them.  Send them along with a bag of Jolly Rancher candies and some sucker sticks to your grand chickabiddies.  It’s like a party in a box.  Something that is easy for grandma to mail and something fun for grandchildren to do.

Mmmm . . . I was thinking.  What would it be like to put a couple of Red Hots on top of a Jolly Rancher.  It could make for a cinnamony-hot sucker.  I wonder what it would be like to melt a caramel and have a caramel sucker — especially after it’s dipped in melted chocolate.  Or possibly Lemon Drops.  Or Root Beer Barrels.  Or Butterscotch Buttons. (If some of the candies didn’t work, I’d just have to eat my mistakes.  Rough task, eh?)

I feel a creative cooking moment coming on. Excuse me as I zip to the grocery store to buy Jolly Ranchers and then hurry home to my kitchen.

P.S.  You’ve just GOT to check out her painting on marshmallows. I adore the love bug, the snowmen, the zombies, the creepy clowns (that really aren’t creepy), Sesame Street marshmallows, the skellies, and ghosts.