Crustless Mini Pumpkin Pies

I love pumpkin pie.  With the exception of my oldest son, everyone in the house loves pumpkin pie.  Until I discovered this recipe last year, I used to just make a regular pumpkin pie; I hate to mess with a good thing, but this is delicious and it has become one of our favorite fall desserts!

Ingredients:

1 cup canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

1/2 cup Original Bisquick mix

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup whole milk

1 T. melted butter

1-1/2 t. pumpkin pie spice

1 t. vanilla

2 eggs

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350.

2. Stir all ingredients together and pour into a greased muffin pan.

3. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Cool. Refrigerate to store.

4.  I like to top mine with a little whipped cream and cinnamon!  YUM!

After eating this delicious treat, we read Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman.  In this story, a witch plants a pumpkin seed with the intention of baking a pie for Halloween.  When she is unable to move the pumpkin herself, passersby (a ghost, vampire, mummy, and bat) offer to help.  They work together, and in the end, share the pie.  There are some great lessons in this book - helping others, accepting help, teamwork, size doesn't always matter, sharing, etc., which make the book one of my favorites for Halloween.                                                 

*This recipe is from In Between Laundry.

Elmer the Elephant Pumpkin Pal and Snack

We are big fans of the book Elmer by David McKee, so when my six year old daughter was given an assignment to create a pumpkin pal based on the main character of a book, it was an easy choice for her.  Actually, she briefly considered Pinkalicious and The Cat in the Hat, but Elmer got her excited about the project.  I do want to mention that this was supposed to be a family project and we worked on it together, but it was mostly just gluing on tissue paper so it isn't very complicated.

Everything we used to create the pumpkin pal was already on hand.  We began by painting glue on the pumpkin in small patches and placing the tissue paper squares all over the sticky surface including the stem (trunk).  Then we coated the squares with a layer of Mod Podge.

We made the ears by drawing ear shapes on the back of a cereal box, cutting them out, and covering them with more tissue paper.  Then we folded part of the ear and used tacks to stick them into the pumpkin.  I tried glue, but it wasn't strong enough and I am out of sticks for the glue gun so the tacks had to do.  Finally, we glued on googly eyes.

I think the final product is great and it was so easy to create.

For a simple snack, I made a patchwork peanut butter and jelly.  I don't really think this needs explaining, but it is one slice of bread with peanut butter and one slice of bread with jelly cut into squares and arranged like patchwork.

Bat Pancakes - Halloween Breakfast or Snack

My eight year old used to be obsessed with bats.  One year, he chose the vampire bat as his animal to adopt at Christmas time!  So, even though he isn't as obsessed as he once was, I still like to make batty treats this time of year.

We began with a snack of bat pancakes, a scoop of ice cream in a pumpkin silicone cup, a little whipped cream, and some bat and pumpkin sprinkles.  YUM!  I made the bats out of chocolate pancakes.  This is the recipe I used (SO good!!):

Ingredients:

• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons butter or 2 tablespoons margarine, melted
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Directions:
• 1.  In a small bowl, combine milk, egg and butter; whisk until blended.
• 2.  In another bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking soda and salt; mix well.
• 3.  Add milk mixture; whisk just until dry ingredients are moistened.
• 4.  Heat griddle over medium heat until hot.
• 5.  For each pancake, pour scant 1/4 cup batter into griddle.
• 6.  Cook 1-2 minutes or until batter is set around edges.

7.  Carefully turn over pancake; cook 1-2 minutes or until pancakes are cooked through.

I cut the pancakes with a bat shaped cookie cutter.

After the snack, we played a game of bat roll and color addition.  This is perfect practice for my six year old.

Each child had a page with bats and a bat cave numbered from two to twelve.  They took turns rolling the dice and would color in the bat or cave with the corresponding number.  The first person to color in all of the numbered spots was the winner.  They had a lot of fun with this game!  You can find the printable bat page to play this game by clicking here.

We have a lot of favorite bat books, but here are a few that we seem to revisit:

• Stellaluna by Janell Canon - a baby fruit bat is separated from her mother and taken in by a family of birds; she must try to live like a bat, but luckily she eventually finds bats just like her
• Bats at the Ballgame by Brian Lies - a group of bats have fun at the ball field
• Bats at the Beach by Brian Lies - a group of bats enjoy a summer night at the beach
• Bats at the Library by Brian Lies - a group of bats are thrilled when the librarian forgets to close the window and they can enjoy some great books
• Bat's Big Game by Eugenia Nobati - a great lesson about sticking with your team whether you are winning or losing can be found in this book about a bat who wants to win.  This also introduces a little science - is a bat an animal or a bird? 
• Five Little Bats Flying in the Night by Steve Metzger - a rhyming book that counts down from five, featuring five little bats getting into mischief

Super Easy Spider Snack

It doesn't get easier than this.

Ingredients:

• one Reese's peanut butter cup (we used dark chocolate, but any variety will do)
• a tiny bit of melted chocolate (I melted a few chocolate chips)
• four pretzel sticks broken in half to make eight spider legs
• two candies for eyes

Directions:

• Place the peanut butter cup upside down on a plate
• Melt your chocolate 
• Dip each pretzel stick half into chocolate and stick them to the sides of the peanut butter cup to make legs
• Dip the candies in the melted chocolate and stick them on top for eyes

If you are looking for a fun book featuring spiders, check out Aaaarrgghh! Spider! by Lydia Monks.

This book is hysterical.  A spider simply wants to become a family pet, but every time she tries to warm over the family, they scream and throw her outside.  This is a must read with fantastic illustrations and some very funny moments.  

Halloween Lunch - There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bat

We love the different books based on There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.  Currently, we are having fun with the Halloween version featuring an old lady who swallowed a bat.  While I was grocery shopping (convenient timing!), the idea of making a special lunch based on the book popped into my head.

In the book by Lucille Colandro, the old lady swallows a bat, an owl, a cat, a ghost, a goblin, some bones, and a wizard.  Here is what I made:

• I used a bat cookie cutter to cut a bat out of bread and then spread Nutella chocolate hazelnut spread on the bat shaped bread.  The red eyes are icing.
• The owl is a piece of bread cut into an owl shape with peanut butter, white icing, chocolate chips, and a piece of candy corn on top.
• I do have a cat cookie cutter but decided to just serve cat whiskers (pretzels).
• The ghost was cut out of bread with a cookie cutter and the bread was topped with plain cream cheese and raisin features.
• The goblin is a spinach leaf with raisin eyes and a dried cherry mouth.
• I used my kitchen shears to cut a bone shape out of a marshmallow.
• For the wizard, I cut a star out of a piece of cheese and placed it on a pretzel stick to make a wand.

Halloween Cookies and Cream Muddy Buddies

I found a recipe for Cookies and Cream Muddy Buddies  at Chef in Training, and decided to use the Halloween Oreo cookies with orange filling to make them seasonal.  We also used Candiquick instead of almond bark.

First, we crushed twenty Oreo cookies.

Then, we measured six cups of Chex cereal into a large bowl.  We melted 12 ounces of Candiquick in the microwave and mixed it with the cereal until the cereal was coated.  Next, we added the Oreo cookie crumbs and mixed it all together.

Finally, we added 1/2 cup powdered sugar and stirred it into the snack mix.

One of our new favorite Halloween books is Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson.

This is a fun book about friendship and helping others.  The witch is flying through the night on her broom and keeps dropping things; every time she drops something, she stops to pick it up and also picks up a new passenger.  All of those passengers work together in the end to help the witch.  We love everything by Julia Donaldson, and were very grateful to Natalie from Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns for mentioning this book that is new to us!  I also recommend heading over to her site to find out what others are reading right now!

 

Graham Cracker Haunted Houses

We made edible haunted houses using graham crackers, chocolate frosting, ghost marshmallows, and Halloween sprinkles.  The kids had a lot of fun making these!

The frosting is Pillsbury Easy Frost chocolate frosting.  It was easy for the kids to use it to stick the graham crackers together and to stick decorations in place.

We finished the haunted fun by reading In the Haunted House by Eve Bunting.  This is a fun, slightly spooky (fun and silly, not scary) book about two children walking through a haunted house.

Another one of our favorite haunted house books is

Ten Timid Ghosts by Jennifer O'Connell.  It really is a fun read.  Ten timid ghosts live in a haunted house, but a witch moves in and wants them out.  She plays tricks to scare them away, but in the end, the ghosts play their own trick.  We love the rhymes and the countdown is a nice bonus.