Dr. Seuss

This past week the kids at school celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday.  I made a Cat in the Hat cookie cake.  I had no idea how tricky it was to make a cookie cake so I made one earlier in the week as practice.  There's plenty of recipes out there with tips on how they made it.  After trying the first cookie cake I ended up finding what worked for me.
I made it from scratch using the toll house recipe.  Shocking, right?  You could always use the pre-made dough too.  Some people recommended adding a 1/4 cup of corn syrup to it to make it more of a soft bake cookie, but this caused more problems for me when cooking it.  My suggestion is to stick to the toll house recipe and get a cookie sheet that is approximately 12 x 18 and line it with parchment paper.  It's so much easier to remove the cookie if it's on parchment paper.  I did not double the recipe.  One batch is enough and you need to spread it out really thin anyway to allow for it to cook evenly.  That was my mistake with the first cookie.  I put it in a smaller pan and it took forever to cook.  You definitely need to watch the cookie.  I put the oven on 325 degrees and the timer set for 15 minutes then I checked it and added a few more minutes each time till it was just right.  You definitely don't want to under-cook it or over-cook it.
Once it was cool I used buttercream frosting to make the Cat in the Hat.  The kids loved it.  A trick on cutting the cookie is to use a pizza cutter.  It made it so easy to slice up and serve.

Candy Pencil

My daughter started Kindergarten this past week.  It was a little rough for her after a few days.  By Thursday she was exhausted and upset.  I never realized my child was such a perfectionist.  I'm hoping after a few weeks we will settle into a routine and it will get a little easier for her.  Here she is the first day of school.  She was happy that day.

Now onto the craft project.  The teacher had a wishlist for the school year so we went out and bought a gift card at one of the places.  I wanted to attach something cute to it and found instructions to make this cute little candy pencil.  I could not even tell you who I need to give credit to for this idea because I found it in multiple places all over blogland.  Anyway, you take a package of Rolos and a Hershey Kiss and tape them together.  Then you wrap it with yellow cardstock.  I went ahead and folded the cardstock so it would have the ridges like a pencil has and pinked the edge where the Hershey Kiss meets up with the Rolos. Then you put a little pink circle on top for the eraser.  I thought it turned out so cute!