Christmas Pizza Pockets

As part of the Immaculate Baking Program I get try try out their new products and see what creative things I can come up with. Recently I had some crescent rolls that needed to get used before expiring and decided to make pizza pockets...and then I decided to see what would happen if I put them in my cookie pan. 1 can made 6 mini pizzas. I layered a piece of crescent dough, a spoonful of pizza sauce, a sprinkle of cheese, and another piece of crescent roll dough. Press the edges to form a seal an cut off excess. They were delicious warm, though the picky kids were not a fan of them cold. So for those who don't mind cold pizza these are great for lunches, if you want it warm it makes a great after school snack or weekend lunch.

 Gingerbread Man

In this lunch : In an Easy Lunchbox

• Gingerbread man and Candy cane mini pizzas
• Gingerbread Cookie family from Pepperidge farms
• Carrots with Tree pick
• Strawberries with gingerbread men cut outs and tree pick

The last 2 never got photographed as they were eaten as an after school snack.  Both preferred warm to cold but my kids are picky, so feel free to do it your own way.

This one I featured as part of a blog hop with my Polar express lunches. If you missed it you can find it here.

Season's Eatings A Blog Hop

Nothing says Holidays quite like food, so of course the awesome Bento Bloggers and Friends needed to have a blog hop to celebrate. But let's face it Christmas is all about excess and indulgence...so we're having 4 hops! I thoroughly enjoyed the first hop Winter Wonderlunch and can't wait to see what the other 3 hops have in store. So after you've awakened your inner child please click the button at the bottom to see what Loving Lunches has decked the bento box with this holiday season, and now All Aboard!

The Polar Express 

All aboard! All aboard!
Tickets please, tickets
Well, you coming?

It's a magic carpet on a rail
Never takes a rest
Flying through the mountains and the snow
Ride for free and join the fun
(You can ride for free)
If you just say yes!
Cause that's the way things happen
On the Polar Express
You bet!

In this lunch : In an Easy Lunch Box

• Polar Express - Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• Snow - Yogurt covered raisins
• Reindeer - Carrots with deco ring
• Santa - Grapes and Strawberries with deco ring

Hot Chocolate

Hot! Hot!
Oh, we got it!
Hot! Hot!
So, we got it!
Hot! Hot!
Yo, we got it!
Hot chocolate!

Here, we've only got one rule:
Never ever let it cool!
Keep it cookin' in the pot,
You've got-
Hot choc-o-lat!

In this lunch : In an Easy Lunch Box

• Santa Mug - Ham and cheese sandwich 
• Hot chocolate - Brownie toffee
• Marshmallows - Yogurt covered raisins
• Carrots
• Strawberries

Believe 

Children, sleeping.
Snow is softly falling.
Dreams are calling,
Like bells in the distance.
We were dreamers,
Not so long ago.
But one by one, we
All had to grow up.

When it seems the magic slipped away...
We find it all again on Christmas Day.

Believe in what your heart is saying,
Hear the melody that's playing.
There's no time to waste,
There so much to celebrate.
Believe in what you feel inside,
Give your dreams the wings to fly.
You have everything you need, if you just believe.

In this lunch : In an Easy Lunch Box

• Santa and Ornament - Pizza Pockets. Crescent rolls from Immaculate Baking with a spoonful of sauce, 1/4 cheese stick, and sprinkle of parmesan cheese inside. Baked in a holiday cookie pan, and decorated with food coloring and candy eyes.
• The North Pole - Pirouette cookie with food coloring stripe
• Wreath - Gummy by Wilton
• Trees - Honeydew melon
• Santa's suspenders and shirt - apple slices
• Featuring my kids gingerbread house they made this past weekend...not sent to school 

  Now off to more edible goodies from Loving Lunch and the other wonderful bloggers sharing the holiday spirit. Keep dreaming of sugar plums until you dance back here. Enjoy!

Eerily Fun Food Begins

October is here, the neighbors are putting out decorations already, my birthday is around the corner, and that means Halloween is coming! My favorite holiday of the year. I love the costumes, candy, and especially horror films. So my kids of course pick up on this and start requesting Halloween themed lunches, not every lunch of course, but a lot. Today's is a simple sandwich cutter but he loved it, and I also put a spooky twist on some coconut macaroons from Immaculate Baking too.

Bats

In this lunch : In our Easy Lunch Box

• Bats - Ham and Cheese sandwich
• Boarder - carrots
• Eyeball  - New Coconut macaroons from Immaculate Baking, with a candy eye. 
• Black grapes with Bat pick

The pre-made coconut cookie dough made these eyes fast and fun. Each package has 12 pre-cut jumbo cookies, you could flatten them but I had eyes in mind so I left them as is. Once golden brown I pulled them out and pressed a candy eye into each one before it cooled completely. So yummy!

Camping Fun

Our big Green Monkey has joined scouts this year. It is a fun new journey teaching the kids to enjoy being outdoors, along with all the other skills and behaviors it will teach.

 After our adventures we enjoyed a wonderful campfire dinner in our Easy Lunch Boxes. I can't say enough about how much we love these. I was so protective over them, no knives allowed! I packed a cutting board for the steaks :). They worked great for dinner, and we washed and reused them for breakfast. I love how easy they are for the kids to open, and it was a perfect way to keep food warm and safe from bugs until everyone was served.

Steak, mushrooms, carrots, edamame, and potatoes.

Of course there were s'mores for dessert, you can't build a fire and not have s'mores! That addiction sparked an idea so when we got home I baked some Gluten Free Peanut-butter cookies from Immaculate Baking and turned those into s'mores. I can't express how sinfully delicious this idea was mm mm mm!

2 Gluten Free Peanut Butter cookies + 1 large marshmallow + 1/4 Hershery bar = Blissful s'mores

Since these were made indoors we just zapped them in the microwave for 10 seconds, still awesome. I wish I had the cookies with me for our trip but this was a fun way to remember the fun we had and keep the camp experience going.

Crescent Rolls 4 Ways

As part of the Immaculate Baking Program I receive some goodies and coupons to try out their products, everything else in this post is unbiased. So one late night around 11pm, I had an urge to bake, I know weird right? I had been planning to make pizza bites for my son's lunch, but once I popped the can open I had a few other ideas and decided to try them all. 1 can, 4 ideas, all winners according to me and my monkeys.

Pizza Pockets 

Directions:

1. Unroll crescent dough
2. Press 2 triangles together  (1/4 sheet) at the seam, then cut in half
3. Add 1 spoonful of pizza sauce, I wen t the easy route with our local brand
4. Sprinkle on cheese
5. Top with other half and press together with the tines of a fork. I was using this one for Roald Dahl Day and wrote Willy Wonka in pizza sauce before baking
6. Bake according to package directions for crescents

I sent this as part of our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory lunches, cold, and my Green Monkey loved it! "Best lunch ever, can I have more?" If it's that good cold I'm telling you, you will never buy a hot pocket again. He LOVES his new Easy Lunch Box we even took them camping this weekend but that will be a story for another time. :)

Pizza Bites

Directions:

1. Repeat the above directions
2. Crease however many squares you want. I took the easy route and used my FunBites CubeIt!

Another fun Charlie and the Chocolate Factory lunch for Roald Dahl Day in our Easy Lunch Boxes. Again I didn't bother warming it up as the rest of the lunch I wanted to stay cold. Little Blue Monkey thought it was awesome and again requested more. So that solves our fears of serving the kids cold pizza, apparently all those nights avoiding dinner has created kids who love cold pizza. WIN!

Sunbutter and Jelly Rolls

Ok so this is where late night baking got me in trouble. Ideally I was going to send beautiful sunbutter and jelly pinwheel rolls to lunch....but it got eaten, before I got a picture, before it got sliced, but it was a delicious afternoon snack so we'll make it again soon.

Directions:

1. Spread however you like on those conjoined triangles. I was going for a spiral so I did sunbutter on one triangle and jelly on the other and rolled it lengthwise .
2. Tuck the ends to keep it from oozing out too much during baking
3. Bake according to package same timing as crescent rolls

Cinnamon Rolls 

 

Again these got eaten up before a pretty presentation picture could be taken, but that just goes to show when it's good it's gone!

Directions:

1. Spread butter, margarine, or whatever you like on the dough
2. Sprinkle with a pinch of sugar and a dash of ground cinnamon (would be just as good with apple pie spice or pumpkin spice etc)
3. Roll into crescents - deliciousness on the inside
4. Bake according to package directions

 So there you have it, any way you roll it these are delicious!

Roald Dahl Day Blog Hop

"There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination." - Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder)

 The Bento Bloggers and Friends are at it again, its time to make a date with Mischief and Mayhem in honor of one of our favorite authors Roald Dahl. Enjoy edible depictions of his best selling children's books. Roll through all of the Dahlicious lunches until you get back here. There's no way of knowing which direction you are going..

Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory 

In keeping with the spirit, it was all done in excess and I ended up with 4 Wonka lunches this week. 

My favorite little Oompa Loompas

 In this lunch : In our brand new Easy Lunch Boxes!!!

• Ham tree (Edible forest)
• Golden ticket - Pizza Pocket using Immaculate Baking Croissants, pizza sauce and shredded Italian blend cheese. recipe to follow in later post.
• Oompa Loompa - Cotton candy grapes, orange, marshmallow eyebrows, carrot nose, candy eyes
• Carrots
• World's Finest Chocolate - My son's school fundraiser chocolate in an ELB Mini Dipper

In this lunch: In an Easy Lunch Box with mini dipper

• Willy Wonka's Hat - Ham stacked cubes with hat on top
• Pizza on a stick - Immaculate Baking Company's crescent rolls pizza pocket, cut with a FunBites CubeIt and Starbucks skewers for the chocolate river. Recipe to follow in a later post.
• Oompa Loompa - Orange, grapes, marshmallow eyebrows, candy eyes, carrot nose
• Carrots
• Willy Wonka - ELB mini dipper with World's Finest Chocolate

  

 In this lunch : (Before I got my ELBs sorry)

• Oompa Loompa - Ham and cheddar with lettuce hair, marshmallow eyebrow, candy eye and food coloring
• Trix swirls cereal
• Grapes and cucumbers
• Yogurt covered raisins and Babybel cheese questions?

 Wonka Boat Ride

 In this lunch : In my Easy Lunch Box with mini dipper

• Wonka Boat - Ham and provolone
• American blend salad with cucumber flowers
•  World's finest Chocolate in Wonka Bar mini dipper
• Oompa Loompa - grapes, orange, marshmallow, candy eyes, carrot nose
• Pistachios 

Willy Wonka: But Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted.

Charlie Bucket: What happened?

Willy Wonka: He lived happily ever after. 

Now off you go to see what Grace over at Eats Amazing has dreamed up in her imagination!

Mickey and Minnie Morning

We have had a fun filled Labor Day weekend so far. Yesterday we added a new little friend to our family, Steve the Guinea Pig. The monkeys are so in love with him it's been a full time job restricting their affections. We survived our first week of school, and are enjoying the 3 day weekend to recover. All those cute rodents in the store yesterday must have stayed in my subconscious because when I went to make breakfast this morning I was drawn to Mickey and Minnie.

Immaculate Baking sent me their new Cinnamon Rolls through their Immaculate Baking Program hoping that we would try them. The rest of this review is unbiased, the opinions and  recipes are of my own creation.

So the thing that attracted me to their products is that they are Non-GMO, no artificial ingredients, no bleached flour, no hydrogenated oil, a health breakfast treat. Who can resist the smell of cinnamon rolls baking? Answer: No one! So please forgive the rushed pictures but once I popped that can the family swarmed the kitchen. It took only a couple of minutes to create my Mickey Mouse cinnamon rolls. I unrolled the 1st ring and cut it in half, then rolled each half into a circle and pressed firmly to the larger roll.

While these delicious Mickey's were cooking I made the scrambled eggs and cleaned and cut the strawberries. The whole breakfast was done and served within 20 minutes.

 

Here they are fresh from the oven before I glazed them with the icing included in the can. Once Mickey was dressed he needed his girlfriend Minnie of course. Minnie was made by scooping the scrambled eggs into the plastic cup that held the icing, which was packaged in a separate pouch so the container was clean. One strawberry cut in half became her bow. Simple, fast, adorable..if I do say so myself.

Everyone devoured their breakfasts. The cinnamon rolls were gobbled up before anything else on their plates. It was nice to have all 4 of use at the breakfast table together and these did the trick.

If you'd like to find out more about Immaculate baking or purchase this or any of their other products here is more information on them.

Have you entered my 1st Giveaway yet? Hurry it ends on 9/4/13. Enter for your chance to win 53 pieces of flair to spruce up your lunch all year long.