Happy Mother’s Day to all! Hope it was lovely.
JT and I babysat my 13 year old nephew, Jack and my 10 year old niece, Annie on a recent weekend while their parents went to the Caiman Islands for a benchmark birthday party! We had a great action packed weekend filled with a visit to the High Park Zoo, bowling at Lucky Strike, cake decorating and cookie baking. Jack had his head burried in his laptop or smart phone at any given time; surprisingly he was not playing games, but monitoring a help desk he set up.
At the zoo, we were very lucky to see the 1 month old baby Wallaby, hoping along side of Mama (he/she even crept back into Mama’s pouch)! And we reacquainted with the Lama that was born last year. Lots of great things to do at this quaint little zoo — chickens to hold, bunnies to pet and Capybaras to feed, and best of all, it’s FREE! If you’re in Toronto, take the kids to High Park, in addition to the zoo, there is an amazing Jamie Bell Adventure Playground that was recently rebuilt due to vandals burning it to the ground (hundreds of volunteers and a celebrity contractor rebuilt the castle, click here to read the article).
The baby Wallaby and Mama drinking water. Shortly after this photo, the baby crawled back into Mama’s pouch.
Annie feeding the baby lama. He had such an adorable face.
He really was having fun, even though he hid it well.
But even after bowling, the weekend wasn’t complete without some quality kitchen time. We wanted to take a cake over to Grandma and Papa’s as a get well gift for Grandma who recently had an operation, so I baked two vanilla slab cakes (well, that’s not the fun part) and Annie cleverly decorated both, one as a gift and one for dessert over the weekend — which was thoroughly enjoyed!
Getting ready to decorate the cakes.
With everything going on, I didn’t have time to make the icing, but the cake was home made.
This cake was for Grandma and Papa.
This one was for us!
We ate al fresco all weekend, which was a HUGE contrast to this past weekend when it SNOWED! Yes, you read that correctly!
We also baked the easiest Peanut Butter Cookies we’ve ever made and I thought I would share them with you because they are gluten free!
The Easiest Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies EVER (recipe from Kraft)
Makes about 24 medium-sized cookies
Ingredients:
- 1 cup Kraft Smooth Peanut Butter (UPDATE) I made these cookies again using all natural peanut butter and they turned out perfectly. I won’t be buying Kraft again for this easy and tasty cookie. Take into consideration how oily the natural pb is, the last batch I made (2015) was excessively oily so I upped the sugar to 3/4 cup).
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 large egg
- Optional 24 milk chocolate wafers
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 325°F.
- Mix all of the ingredients together until well blended (no need to drag out the hand mixer, just mix well with a spoon).
- Roll into 24 balls and place on parchment paper about 4 inches apart. Flatten with fork (or with a flatten with a milk chocolate wafer pressing it into the cookie).
- Bake 20 minutes or until lightly brown. Do not over bake. Cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet and transfer to wire racks. Cool completely if you can resist eating.
Cookie making is serious business.
Batch one, traditional peanut butter cookie.
Annie claimed that we had mice because the cookies kept disappearing.
They were so successful, we made another batch the next day.
Delicious PB and Chocolate, what’s not to love? I didn’t have quite enough Kraft PB so I used a couple of tablespoons of natural crunchy PB I had on hand. Next time, I’ll try it all with the natural stuff.
