Chocolate Reindeer Comes to Life

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Molly was pretty excited about her Chocolate Reindeer idea and wanted to try it out before we go to Houston for Christmas.  I warned her it may not come out quite like she imaged and to be ready for a mess.  She acknowledged the rick, and then we went all in on making it happen!  Despite my hesitations, I really wanted to make Molly’s holiday invention work too.

Molly and I had a fun time figuring out how to bring  her vision to reality.  It was an interesting challenge and took a fair amount of planning and research!  In the end, it came out a too goopy to, uh, eat, much less bring to Houston.  But it was a fun experiment, and Molly happily ate up her practice Chocolate Reindeer.

I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.

Chocolate Reindeer Blueprint

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Molly became inspired to create a new holiday treat called a Chocolate Reindeer, inspired by a Chocolate Mousse.   Her vision is three layers of chocolatey goodness, one layer for each “official” Christmas color: red, green, and white.

Molly’s initial idea was for each layer to be melted, colored chocolate.  After some discussion and brainstorming , we decided to use a combination layers with heavier ingredient on the bottom and lighter on the top.

  1. Bottom layer: red-colored white chocolate
  2. Middle layer:  green-colored melted marshmallows
  3. Top layer: natural white-colored whipped cream

Here’s the blueprint.

choc-reindeer-blueprint.jpeg

 

 

| patmcg

Last night, Molly kept me up late by asking “What is 1000 divided by 1000?” Or more generally, how does division work? That’s some Dad crack. We worked it out on the chalkboard table. #math #chalkboard #numbers #school #green #austin #texas #atx #shotoniphone #accidentallyartsy #parenting
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New Bedroom!

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The girls’ new bedroom is officially done ready, and they’re settled in.  I’m pretty happy with it, and I think they are too.  I was going for stylish yet cozy. 🤷🏻‍♂️  And we retained some of the old Harry Potter theme, namely their Gryffindor (Claire) and Ravenclaw (Molly) throw blankets.

I donated the old bunk bed, which oddly enough they did not love (who doesn’t love bunk beds?).  I painted and assembled that bunk bed on the patio of my old condo in the summer heat of 2016, and now it’s moved on to a better home at Re-Store down the street.molly-jump.jpeg

girls-room-jan-2019.jpeg

Goats!

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We discovered some goats at the school down the street.  They’re so friendly and cute!  They’re basically vegetarian dogs.  Now we walk over and visit them form time to time.

Pound cake

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Claire wanted to do some baking, so we picked a lemon pound cake recipe. It was a fun project and an expensive cake – $39 in supplies since I don’t do a lot of baking. At least we’re all set for the next baking project now.