Sheep Cupcakes

Aren't these cute! This was my craft idea for last night's messy church at my church. Messy church is a once a month event that we have for families. Each "Messy"
involves a craft, an interactive lesson and dinner for families. Last night's theme was "The Good Shepherd knows his sheep". I knew we hadn't had a food craft in a while and have never done cupcakes, so I googled sheep cupcakes to see what I could find. I found the idea for these on the Food Network's Site. Their cupcakes are slightly different than the ones we did. You can see theirs here. We couldn't quite find all of the decorating ingredients that they used (the candy eyes and the gumdrop noses) so we improvised and used mini M&M's. I also didn't make their cupcake recipe so I don't know what that part tastes like. I did make their icing, but had to abandon it as it was too thick and tearing the cupcakes apart. Fortunately, I discovered this as I was making the sample 45 minutes before the event started and had time to head out to the store and pick up some ready made. The ready made worked well and was easy for the kids to use. The kids and parents really loved this craft. And that is what I would recommend it for, a craft. It is very time consuming - unless you are the kind of person who loves to spend all afternoon decorating cupcakes like this.

How to make:

Make the cupcakes first, try out the foodnetwork.com recipe, your favorite recipe or cheat like me and use a box mix - let cupcakes cool.

For decorating:
-frosting
-marshmallows (1 per cupcake)
-mini marshmallows (24-30 per cupcake)
-mini M&M's (3 per cupcake)
-purple mini jellybeans (4 per cupcake)
-pink mini jellybeans (2 per cupcake)
-licorice shoelaces (cut into 1cm and 3cm pieces - 1 each per cupcake)

Frost the cupcake. Stick a large marshmallow on top to be the sheep's body. Use the frosting like glue for the rest of the stick on ingredients, putting the frosting on it first and then sticking on. Start with the Mini M&M's for eyes and nose. Use the 1 cm licorice shoelace for the mouth. Start at the bottom and work your way up and around with the mini marshmallows to make the sheep's wool. Use the 4 purple jellybeans for feet and the pink ones for ears. Take the 3cm licorice shoelace, curl it and stick it on for a tail. So cute!

Black Bean and Corn Salad and a Candy Man

Church picnic time! Everyone brings a salad. Where do I turn to find my recipe? The Podleski sisters's Eat, Shrink and Be Merry of course (the original title being Kernel Austin). It's a really yummy, but different salad offering, a nice change.

1 tbsp olive oil
4 cups whole-kernel corn, canned or frozen (thaw first if using frozen)
1/2 cup minced red onions
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced (optional)
1 tsp minced garlic
1/4 tsp each ground cumin and chili powder
1 cup quartered grape tomatoes or 1 cup diced red bell pepper (I used a little of both)
1 cup canned black beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice
2 tbsp minced fresh cilantro
1 tbsp hickory-flavored bbq sauce
1 tsp granulated sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a large, non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add corn. Cook and stir until corn just begins to char (don't burn it!), about 8 minutes. Add onions, jalapeno, garlic, cumin and chili powder. Cook and stir 1 more minute. Remove from heat.
Transfer corn mixture to a large bowl and add remaining ingredients. Mix well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.



This was a cute, edible craft the kids made at the picnic.

The body is a long skewer threaded with 3 large marshmallows. Put half a toothpick into each side of the body and thread a gummy worm on each for arms. A circle gummy completes it for the head. Some kids got really into it and added some gummy worms for feet and antenna too.