2 Bento #167 - Mini Meatballs & Puzzle Class Snack

We have a smallish bento today, since it's a special day at school - 'Grandfriends' day.  Not only did we bring a special class snack for the kids and visitors, but my parents, Ella's Mumu & Obbie are visiting from Maryland!  We are so excited that they were able to come for a nice visit.

Here is our class snack (plus two other trays not shown) - they are just simple cheese sandwiches cut out with the puzzle Lunch Punch Match & Munch cutter, and assembled  using their nifty puzzle diagram (which had my mom and I scratching our heads more than once!)  Their's looks a lot nicer than ours, that's for sure, but it was still pretty neat.

Bento #167 - Mini meatballs, steamed organic broccoli, mini pretzel sticks, salad cream, and an almond butter-stuffed Aussie apple.

Enter the AllThingsForSale bento giveaway here!

5 Carrot Cranberry Bread

I happened to have class snack today, this last half-day of school before a whole two weeks vacation; vacation for whom, I'm not quite certain!  I made the kids this low-sugar organic carrot bread, in muffin form.  I didn't tell Ella that the secret ingredient was pureed carrot, because I didn't want her to say anything in class and dissuade anyone from trying it.  Good news is that every child, except one, (who is fundamentally opposed to muffins on principle) gobbled these down.  At least according to E, who is generally a reliable raconteur.  Until she's about 8, anyway.

I used the Spice Carrot Muffins recipe from Mommy's Kitchen blog, and followed it to the letter except for three changes (as I really try to do when baking things...otherwise things tend to go awry....)  The first change was insignificant, I changed the raisins to dried cranberries.  The second change was to halve the sugar.  The last change I made was entirely unintentional and was borne of my inattention.  I accidentally lost count when I was scooping the flour, and I believe I used 1/2 cup more than was called for.  Whoops!  But, they came out really nicely anyway, the texture was great, not too dry, but if you want to make my mistake, I'd recommend adding a little more spice.  I doubled the recipe and it made 24 muffins plus an 8x8 square baking dish.  The recipe below are the measurements exactly how they should be (including the full amount of sugar) for 12 regular-sized muffins.

You'll need:

1/2 cup sugar
1/2  cup brown sugar

3/4  cup plain yogurt 

4  tablespoons unsalted butter, melted 

1/2  teaspoon vanilla extract 

1  large egg 

1/4  cup milk 

3/4 cup pureed carrots
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2  teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2  teaspoon salt
2  teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2  cup raisins or dried cranberries, optional

Preheat oven to 375, and spray a muffin tin or line with paper cups.

In a large mixing bowl combine sugars, yogurt, butter, vanilla, egg, milk and carrot and mix well.  In another bowl mix together all remaining dry ingredients except raisins/craisins, if using.  Pour wet batter into the dry and mix until just combined, then add the fruit and gently fold in.

Scoop batter into cups and fill 3/4 of the way full.  Bake muffins for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  The 8x8 dish took 35 minutes.

And, voila!  I added used Hello Kitty cups and little jungle animal cupcake toppers to make them extra-fun for their last day of school.

I topped the square loaf with a little powdered sugar.

If I can get 16 unsuspecting kids to eat some carrots this way, so can  you!

6 Bento #94 - Baby Heirloom Tomatoes & Basil

My goodness, it's been a crazy few days.  Today's the last day before school starts, and I was desperate to go shopping.  E and I had a very late breakfast on the run to Trader Joe's.  We picked up these really adorable, juicy multicolored baby Heirloom tomatoes.  In fact, E was the one who insisted on buying them, just because they looked so interesting.  So, I incorporated them into a late snack today, along with fresh basil leaves.

Bento #94 - Baby Heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella, basil leaves, grapes and Caesar dip.

P.S. - I want to send a huge shout-out to Piyush of Best How To Blogger for his help and expertise in revamping the layout of this blog!  Thank you!!

2 Oatmeal-Banana Muffins

Today is our classroom snack day, and like I normally do, I bake something (lots of little, individual portions, doesn't take a lot of time.)  I decided to try my hand once more at actually baking with all these silicone cups I have.  The last time I made the attempt, I forgot to oil them, and the muffins stuck like crazy and were ruined.

This time, however, they came out perfectly.  Popped right out.  I thought the stars came out the best, but they are the smallest volume-wise.  I also really like the new pink flower cups, they are thicker and not as tall as the other flower cups.  The fluting came out really well on the square cups.

0 Bento #33 - Lunch & Classroom Snack

About once a month we are assigned classroom snack, which I need to prepare for 20. I tried to make mini corn muffins, but apparently I can't accomplish that on the first try!  Flat and burned.  Yuck!  I scrapped the whole pan.

Corn muffin FAIL:

Second batch was much better, but they didn't get golden brown on the top like I wanted, but I was too terrified of having them burn like the first batch, and I certainly didn't want to stay up past 2am.  And anyway, we're talking 3 year olds here, not Tom Colicchio.  I made a fresh strawberry, pineapple, grape and banana fruit salad to go along with it.

Miss E had fish sticks for dinner last night that she didn't finish, as well as mac n' cheese, so I decided to make her lunch easy on myself and just pack those for her (and make a little more room in my fridge.)

Bento #33 - Mac n' cheese and fish sticks with cheese stars and hearts, broccoli and spinach dipping sauce.