Caramel Apples for a Safari Themed Baby Shower

Having your first baby is a wild ride so why not have a safari themed baby shower! My inspiration for these caramel & chocolate dipped apples were straight out of the savanna complete with monkeys, hippos, tigers and elephants.

Peacock Themed Wedding Cake Pops

I actually like to call these cake drops-- upside down cake pops I made for a summer wedding. Cake drops so are easy to display on beautiful trays and beautiful and tasty addition. 125 cake drops were made to order in "peacock" style color & theme for a romantic and vibrant wedding. I chose teal, blue, purple and crisp white adorned with sparkly sugar crystals and chocolate stringer decoration. The colors were vibrant indeed! Sorry for the poor lighting, some detail is lost because I snapped a picture in the fridge :)

Get Suckered!

Summertime Lollipops

The perfect companion after riding bikes through the sprinklers on a hot summer day is a tasty hard candy sucker and the kids like them too. HA! My kids love homemade hard suckers. They love to help make them too! What's not to love: sugar, water, corn syrup (sugar) and flavoring. I've made them the same way since I was a little girl with my mom. We've always used Lorann oils, but this time I decided to try essential oils after a few so-so batches. 

Let me tell you the EO's make FANTASTIC tasting suckers! I recruited my wonderful neighbor to help me in a sucker making frenzy and after 600 suckers and about 20lbs of sugar it was hard to stop trying out new oils flavors. 

Why essential oils? Essential oils are natural, derived from the peel, flower or leaf of plants. They literally are the aromatic essences of plants so by using EO's the hard candy tastes intense and fresh. I did use the other flavoring oils to make fun kid friendly flavors like Cotton Candy and Pina Colada. There just isn't a cotton candy essential oil, dangit! 

I dipped some suckers in dark chocolate. The chocoholic in me couldn't resist! They were extra delicious but not hot weather friendly. Didn't this mason jar arrangement make a cute present for my neighbor? He turned 45 so this was just a sampling of the 45 suckers he got :)

EO suckers we made: Sweet Orange, Anise, Tangerine, Grapefruit, Lime, Lemon, Cinnamon, Peppermint and Lemon+Lime. I've got more essential oil sucker flavors in mind for next time.

Regular flavoring: Cotton Candy, Pina Colada, Butterscotch (next time Im making a real butterscotch sucker!)

The Easter Report

What do you get when you mix crunchy, chewy, fluffy, sticky, and gooey to smooth, sweet, adorable, rich, dark and milky? why that's Easter of course!

Oh Easter... I get very excited about Easter candy making! 

I have so many different chocolates ideas and molds I love to make for Easter, I'm forced to pick and choose. To be honest, the reason why is because I only have a couple hundred pounds of chocolate left to work with till our next order. Lets just start with the adorable foil wrapped &  filled eggs: coconuts, turtles, truffles, peanut butters, eggs with nuts or without nuts, extra large eggs, hollow egg boxes, solid little mini eggs.

Oh then there is the suckers! All of the centers don't need to be homemade (my favorites are). These are super easy, tasty too, peeps on sticks! They're dipped and detailed with a marshmallow tail. For other suckers there are rabbits, ducks, chicks. Rabbits with little wagons pulling around a bunch of baby chicks (I love that mold). I mean it can get out of control, I haven't even really started in on the rabbits. Do you know how many adorable rabbits there are at Easter? I'm not interested in the fluffy, breathing, hopping kind. I like the kind I can chomp on.

There is one rabbit in particular that I will tell you about he is an solid 

1lb+ rabbit that I dearly love.

Here is my little friend- I absolutely adore bringing him to life every year. I can only describe my relationship with him like getting a cherished visit from a very old friend. One who knows your whole story and you're totally comfortable around. He has been in my life for over 30 years. His daddy even used to show up in my own Easter baskets as a kid. A long time ago his design was reworked just a little bit and we started to make him by the thousands in our family chocolate business, Touchard's Chocolates. Back then I wasn't so fond of the little bugger, it was a lot of work.  But now I have a special emotional attachment to him. My kids enjoy seeing him every year too. I know I'm a little crazy, but I do absolutely love making candy at Easter time. I love to share it too. I've only added just a few photo highlights, (like a drop in the bucket) but trust me there is much more than I could post.