Easy Oreo pops and truffles: quick and easy treats for any occassion

So you need to come up with some treats for a children's party, afternoon tea or a baby shower type event and don't have a great deal of time (or lets face it the skills)to bake up a storm.

I always seem to have one of these occasions pop up where you would love to make something really cute that everyone will love but end up buying something from the supermarket (and feeling a bit rubbish about it).

No I'm not advocating 'competitive mothering', you know the kind of Mum who its obvious have spent an entire week creating a professional 'Bake Off' worthy offering in order to keep up with the Joneses but I do like to at least look like I care and made an effort.

If this is you then next time you should try one of these two little gems and voila, problem solved!  You really don't need to do a lot with these two REALLY easy no bake treat solutions I promise its mainly melting and dipping!

Oreo Lollipops

 

What you will need:
Lolly sticks
Oreo's (or the Aldi version that I used is fine)
Chocolate or candy melts (any kind is fine)
Sprinkles  

Choose the chocolate and sprinkles that fit your theme.  I went with white chocolate and multi-coloured sprinkles but anything goes.

 

Step 1

Open your Oreo's and gently insert your sticks a good way into the biscuit to make sure they are secure

Naked Oreo pops ready to coat

Step 2

Melt your chocolate in the microwave in short bursts, stiring in between until fully melted.

Step 3

Coat your Oreo pops in chocolate, holding them over the chocolate and turning to allow the excess to drip off and lay them out on greaseproof paper.

Lollipop drying station

Step 4

Sprinkle with whatever you like and leave to set on the paper.  All done (told you it was easy)!

Tip:  You might want to wipe any excess chocolate from around your pops before they set if you have a lot of excess chocolate pooling as they dry.  Just make sure you twirl over the chocolate bowl for a little longer to stop this happening with the next one.

 

Oreo Truffles

 

What you will need:


3 packs of Oreo's (or the Aldi version that I used is fine)
1 pack of Cream Cheese
Chocolate or candy melts (any kind is fine)
Sprinkles  


Choose the chocolate and sprinkles that fit your theme.  I went with white chocolate and pink and blue sprinkles as this batch were for a baby shower but anything goes.

Step 1

Blitz up your biscuits into crumbs.  Either in a food processor or in a frezzer bag with a rolling pin and bash away.  I blitzed in 3 batches in the food processor in small 2 second bursts and they came out like this:

Oreo crumbs

Step 2

Mix together with a full pack of cream cheese until it forms into a dough like so:

Oreo truffle dough

Step 3

Form into small balls in the palm of your hand and put into the fridge to chill for 20 minutes

Truffle balls ready for the fridge

Step 4

Melt your chocolate in the microwave in short bursts, stiring in between until fully melted.


Step 5

Lower your truffle on a spoon into the melted chocolate and turn until coated.  Remove gently and place on greaseproof paper.

Tip: If you would like to make your truffles appear like cake pops then use a pretty wide drinking straw pushed into the truffle as the stick.  Pick up your truffle by inserting your straw and  dip it into the chocolate to coat.  Then place your truffle pop upright in a glass to set.

Step 6

Sprinkle with your chosen decorations or some crushed cookie to finish

This recipe does make quite a large batch of truffles, around 30 or so but they are sooo good that really isn't a problem!

Enjoy!

Yummy Easter Bark

In an effort to get rid of the rest of our Easter egg glut and have some serious fun too we had a go at making yummy Easter chocolate bark today.

Now I have to admit that our version is a little less 'designer cute' and a little more 'chuck it all on' but then the kids did make it!

We were inspired by a recipe that I found on Pintrest and added our own sparkle and flair. Check out my Pintrest Easter board for the original post.

This is what we used from our Easter grotto

What you'll need for your Easter Bark

Now we set about smashing up our white chocolate bunnies and our eggs and melted them in shot blasts in the microwave is 2 separate bowls.

Mmmmm, all ready for melting

You will need to bash up your Oreo's into crumbs with a rolling pin before you start and lay out all of your Easter egg sweeties ready.  We had Smarties, some Minion Mini Eggs, Jazzies, mini marshmallows and a selection of sprinkles from our baking cupboard.

Clingfilm your tray for ease of removal

Set up your baking tray with 2 layers of cling film to make it easy to get your bark out later and sprinkle with a handful of your sweets and some Oreo crumbs.

The Easter Bark creation station

Once the chocolate is melted pour it over the scattered sweets in the tray any way you like as you will be swirling it together.

Pour over the melted chocolate yummyness

Then, with the wrong end of a spoon give your chocolate a gentle swirl until it looks something like this.

Swirly whirly time

  
Now all that is left to do is let the children cover it with sweeties and chocolates, sprinkle over more Oreo crumbs and then top with a selection of sprinkles and a little edible glitter (if you have it).

Ta dah, sugar heaven!

Pop this into the fridge for about an hour to set firm and then break it into slivers and enjoy!

And now for the best part...eating your Easter Bark

It was a sure fire hit in our house so we hope you enjoy it too.

 

Easter egg recycling ideas to keep them busy in the holidays

OK so I don't know about anyone else but we seen to have more than enough Easter eggs in our house to last us until next year so today we have set about using a few up, getting messy and being (a bit) creative.

I am not reinventing the wheel here as you will see these ideas are oldies but goodies and I thought we would share anyway.

So, first of all we had great fun with the egg opening and chocolate smashing, melting and spoon licking to make these beauty's.

Easter nest anyone?

I'm not going to include a recipe as I'm sure you all know how its done but we had fun doing it so I'm sharing all the same!

The next bit (what to do with all the shinny papers) was surprisingly good fun.  We drew our best Easter egg designs onto sugar paper, got out the glitter glue and ripped the shinny paper and some tissue paper up into little bits.  

Our inspiration came from yesterdays decopatch experiment which also went surprisingly well (for me and children's crafts that is)!

Fill in the different sections of your Easter egg design with either a mosaic of glued down shiny paper or screwed up tiny balls of tissue paper, like this:

The creation station

Et Voila!

Now all you have to do is leave it to dry and hang it up on your fridge door for a lovely Easter decoration!

For some more Easter craft ideas why not check out my Easter Pintrest board?

As we STILL have a small Easter egg shop in our living room we are also planning to give a version of this  Easter Bark a try later in the week or maybe some Easter chocolate tiffin so keep an eye out.

Design your own decopatch letters for an easy, fun craft

If you have more than one little one to entertain then the age gaps can mean it's sometimes really hard to find activities that you can do with both or all.

These cute and very simple decopatch letters are a quick craft to set up and can easily be done either during a nap time or with the little ones too if you don't mind getting messy.

They really take very little skill so don't need a great deal of adult help and the results are really lovely.

Our finished decopatch letter

I cheated and bought this little kit from our local craft cafe Create It but all the bits and pieces are easily picked up from places like amazon, eBay, The Works or Hobbycraft.
 

What you'll need:

• Cardboard letters or other object to decorate.  These can be picked up online or from craft shops.
• A small paint brush
• Scissors
• 'Mod podge' glue (again easily available from craft shops or online)
• Decopatch papers, the prettier the brighter the better!
• Jewels, buttons, sequins of other pretty bits and bobs your might have.

Decopatch kit

The creation station

What you do:

Start by cutting the papers into small squares so you are ready to go, they are very thin so children's scissors are fine for this but would also help to avoid boredom kicking in.  Faye was very precise (if not painfully slow) at this bit and there were lots of papers!

Next you paste a small amount of 'mod podge' glue onto the letter, place your paper square over the top and then add a layer of glue over that to flatten it down and seal it in place.

Overlay the papers to get a nice patchwork effect and keep going until you have covered the whole template, ta dah!  It dries really fast so don't paste too large of an area or you get a build up of dried glue.

Now you could stop here but we all love a little glitz so now you can add a little glitter or some embellishments to your project using the same glue.

We used some buttons, sequins and gems but you can literally add anything!

Our kit was for a small letter but you can but bigger ones which look great on kids room doors or a full name of letter to go up on a shelf.  You can also decopatch things to already have, boxes, animal figures or for a bigger project these little sets of drawers from IKEA  would be great.  

The kits are a great idea for birthday presents or even a birthday party activity.  The possibilities are endless and we will definitely be doing it again!

Have fun!

Making Pitta Pizzas with my creative little mini chefs

If you are anything like me and looking for an easy way to make mealtimes a bit more smiley and a bit less shouty then these pitta pizzas are a great activity that is cheap, easy to set up and simple to get even the very little ones involved and eating!

Our finished pizza creations

All you need are some pitta breads (I use wholemeal but you don't have to), tomato paste, cheese and a selection of toppings of your choice.  The more colorful and exciting the better!

The creation station

Give them a helping hand getting started with the tomato paste and then really let them loose!   Resist the OCD urge to help them 'do it properly' that I certainly have.   

Smiley face fun!

Make sure you make a note of who made which one though or it could all go terribly wrong!!










I also add in a few dips if I have any in as my toddler loves anything dippy so all the more fun.

Watch them go!

It really doesn't matter what they put where as long as they get some cheese on the top and then pop them under a hot grill for about 5-6 mins until they are starting to brown mmm.

Top Tip:  I normally let them eat the leftover toppings while they cook to help with the waiting as 6 minutes is a long time when you're pint sized.

Nearly ready...

I love making these with the kids as they really enjoy the activity, its a quick meal and they are really nice for grown ups to so its win win. 

Dinner is served

Et Voila, happy full tummies and zero whinging!  They will be begging to make them again believe me.