I got in trouble with Joe because he took all the pictures for this entry and I kept hounding and HOUNDING him to edit and upload them so i could post them on the blog. When he finally got around to them, I suddenly became busy and let this blog entry go for days.
I probably could have gone a few more days before buckling down to blog about it, but then I got caught red-handed because he got impatient with me and blogged about it himself on his blog. Then he wrote that everyone should go to my blog for the details. Except when people clicked onto my blog, there was no content about it! Darn you Joe and your evil genius ways!
Well, here I am, to talk about the details, except I realized that the photos pretty much explain it all. Crystal and her friends were so cute. I forgot that 9 year old kids are smart and talk like adults! However, unlike adults, they need tons of breaks.
I was sneaky and grabbed their attention with ice cream BEFORE their meal. Hey, it’s a party after all! They learned how to make fresh strawberry sauce with real strawberries and then assembled their own fizzy strawberry ice cream floats.
My pita chips are high in demand, so I decided to teach the kids how to make an easy healthy snack. My sous chef and friend, Amy was a lifesaver. I had just come off of another cooking class the day before and was tired and losing my voice, so she ended up doing some of the demos for me. Luckily, she has helped me with enough classes and knows my recipes enough to run a class herself if she wanted to!
They took their pita break outside and opened up their Chef Julie goody bags containing some kid-friendly cooking tools, bubbles and candy.
The girls were such great students. They all volunteered to measure flour, squish tomatoes or scoop cupcake batter.
They were put to work assembling “easy ravioli” for their lunch. Then they had fun outside with a bubble blowing break while Amy and I cooked the ravioli and finished the tomato sauce for them.
But I made sure they came back in to plate their own food. I find that kids are more likely to eat something if they take ownership of their plate and know how it was made.
After lunch, they went to play again while we set up the cupcake ingredients. This group liked the baking part the best by far.
While the cupcakes were baking, I sent them outside again to go work on designing and decorating their aprons with puffy paint.
They came back in to decorate their cupcakes and contribute to making Crystal’s birthday “cake.”
Crystal was eager to put the candles on her own cake. Blue is her favorite color.
We all sang “happy birthday” outside and enjoyed our creations together. I hope Crystal had a very happy birthday. It was definitely a blast for me.
