1) Stir 4 small boxes of gelatin into 2.5 cups of boiling apple juice. Yes, this is the basic recipe for Jell-o Jiggler’s.
2) Pour into whatever type of pan you’d like; you can either plan on cutting the jello into small pieces or mold it into small pieces in the first place. I used mini ice-cube trays.
3) Pop them in the fridge till they’re firm.
4) Unmold the pieces onto a plate or pan sprayed with non-stick cooking spray
5) Cover loosely (in a paper bag, for example), place in a warm, dry place (like the top of your fridge) and let it dry for a day or two.

And that’s it!

I found this out when I’d intended to make Jigglers with my kindergarten class in Russia. My host mother found the jello in the fridge, wasn’t sure what it was (this was nearly 15 years ago) and simply took it out and set it on top. I’d already cut out one shape to test it, and to my surprise it ended up tasting much like gummy bears — maybe even better.

We’re going to try coating ours in Vitamin C crystals before they dry this time to see if we can get sour gummies too. I’ll let you know how they turn out.

We’re actually doing this party for my husband’s birthday, just a tiny celebration for the four of us this time. Its amazing how easily the ideas flowed today, and how quickly things went together. Maybe its that I’m not secretly stressed about other kids moms thinking I’m an insufficient parent ;-p

Anyway, as long as the creative juices are on tap, I figured I’d share a round with you:

Bubble Blowing Contest

Need I say more? For younger kids, just set out a bubble blower and let them go to town.

Musical Jellyfish

Use throw pillows instead of chairs. There’s a sponge bob episode where he jams with the jellyfish for a while. This would be ideal music.

A meal fit for Neptune

Dollar menu hamburgers

Sundaes with a variety of toppings

Sponge Bob Square Pants Crispie Treats

You’ll need:
• Items needed for your favorite rice crispie recipe (Save a few marshmallows to make glue)
• Yellow food coloring paste
• Red shoestring licorice
• White Airheads taffy (Mystery flavor)
• Blue Airheads taffy (Blue raspberry I think)
• Chocolate Chips
• 13×9 cake pan

Roll the taffy into thin, flat pieces. Cut out circles for eyes and white squares for buck teeth. You’ll want to use a little melted marshmallow to fix the blue irises to the white eyes.

Dye a batch of rice crispie treats bright yellow (add the dye as the marshmallows are melting). Press most of the mixture into a buttered cake pan, and cut score lines where you’ll be cutting the treats. Roll some of the mixture into a ‘rope’ ,cut off pieces for sponge bob noses, and push one into each treat.

Using a little frosting or a few melted marshmallows, attach the eyes, cut pieces of red licorice for the mouth and freckles; attach teeth. And then add chocolate chip pupils. If you wanted to, you could use black shoestring licorice for eyelashes too. Put each spongebob in a treat bag so it doesn’t dry out and get nasty.

You could probably convert this idea into a cake quite easily, too. I’d use a yellow mix and slice the top crust and edges off, and brush with a thin clear glaze. You’d probably have to draw the nose with decorator gel though, and outline the eyes as well.

Spongebob Square Pants Piñata

You’ll need:
• White paper
• Sharpie markers in red and black. If you have olive green for his spots, perfect.
• Light blue crayon, marker colored pencil, or sharpie
• A glue stick
• Scissors
• Two solid yellow gift bags with handles (Same size, medium or large depending on your party)
• Clear tape (Packing tape works)
• Filler candy & toys
  • Ideas: Bubble gum (reminiscent of the Bubble Buddy episode), gummy crabby patties, sponge bob fruit snacks, jelly bracelets, Swedish fish, chocolate coins

  Decorate one bag as spongebob’s face. For mine, I traced circles for eyes, drew an oval over it for a nose, and circles for cheeks. I added detail, cut the eyes like so, pasted them to the bag, and markered in the facial features. Bear in mind, this doesn’t have to look perfect. The kids are going to be breaking it to pieces anyway.

  

  Cutting out Spongebob shaped eyes

  

  Now you have two bags, with one of them decorated like sponge bob

  Cut the handles off the undecorated bag for the bottom of the piñata. Fill it with candy, etc. Carefully slide the bag with Sponge Bob on it over the filled bag.

  

  Slide Spongebobs face over the bottom half of the pinata

  

  Finished Sponge Bob Square Pants Pinata!

  Turn the whole thing right side up and tape it into place. If your kids are older and tougher, or if the bags are large enough that they’d be a little weak, add extra tape for reinforcement so the piñata will be harder to break. Hang it up by the handles, and that’s it!

  And finally…

  Stand up tall, put on a big cheesy SpongeBob Squarepants grin, and shout “I’m READY!”

You’ll need -

3 bags of Microwave Popcorn (plain, white butter, or butter flavored is fine)
1 bag of Nestle White Chocolate Morsels (I tried walmart brand once with this, and it was kinda gross)
1 bag of Reeses Pieces Mini (For baking)

Make the popcorn and transfer it from one large bowl, sifting out the unpopped / hard kernels

Put the chips in a microwave safe bowl. Microwave on high for 10-20 seconds, stir, and repeat, until the chocolate is smooth. Don’t leave it in for more than 20 seconds at a time or it might scorch.

Pour the chocolate over the popcorn, stir until the popcorn is pretty well coated. Add the peanut butter pieces and stir again.

Put the popcorn in pans too cool off. If you let it harden in a big pan, it’ll get stuck like that and be harder to share with your friends. Which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

Enjoy – and enjoy your Halloween! (Or Christmas, or Family Home Evening, or Tuesday .. you get the idea!)

1 6oz solid white albacore (drained)
1 med tomato, cut into wedges
1 dill pickle, chopped
Dehydrated onion flakes (1 T or so)
2 slices pepper jack cheese, chunked
1 bag carrot & cabbage cole slaw
Mayo, to taste
Mesquite seasoning, to taste

1 8 oz brick of cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup of Milk
1 graham cracker crust
Ripe banana + a few tablespoons of lemon juice (Or some other fruit if you’d like for another variation)
1 pkg instant pudding (Banana flavor for this variation)
Sweetened Whipped Cream

1) Blend the cream cheese until it’s smooth. Slowly add the milk and continue blending until it’s creamy and not quite as thick.
2) Slice your banana and dip the pieces in lemon juice to keep them from turning brown, and put them on the bottom of a graham cracker crust.
3) Slowly add the pudding mix to the milk and cream cheese. Blend just till smooth and spread/pour it into the crust ASAP (It will get really thick, really fast, so work quickly).

Put that in the fridge until you are ready to serve it. And when you are ready, cover the top with whipped cream, and that’s that.

Rub a little butter on a cookie sheet. Cut 1 tablespoon of butter off and cut it into enough pieces that each of your helpers will have one when the time comes. Put the smaller bits aside, drop the rest into a large pot on medium low heat.

While the butter melts, show your helpers how to break the shredded wheat biscuits into twig-size pieces. Each box of shredded wheat comes with smaller bags of cereal. If they’ll gently smash the cereal in the bag, it will come out just right without breaking the ends and spraying bits of shredded wheat all over the kitchen (we learned about contents under pressure from one of our more enthused helpers).

Once the butter has melted, add the mini marshmallows and stir until everything is melted and creamy. Then take the pot off heat, and add the cereal. While you stir the cereal to cover it all with the sticky stuff, have your helpers coat their clean hands with the leftover butter. Making sure it’s cool enough to handle, give each child a golf-ball-to-tennis-ball sized glob of the cereal mixture to form into a nest. Let them be creative. Or if you don’t have helpers, just press each ball together so it’s nice and ‘glued’ then flatten it on the pan, pressing up the sides enough to hold a few candy eggs. Let them cool off while you tell a spring story, and enjoy

Birds nests treats

A sweet girl enjoying the nest she just made

One packet works well with about one prepared can of frosting, so if you’d like lots of colors from one can or batch, just use less koolaid.

Can you imagine a pink-lemonade birthday cake with raspberry roses and lime leaves? Or “conversation heart” valentine cookies that taste oh-so-much better than their Necco anscestors? Mmmm

1 8oz package softened Neufchatel or cream cheese
1 4oz can Old El Paso® Chopped Green Chiles
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon lime juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 16.3 oz can Pillsbury® Grands! Biscuits Flaky Butter Tastin’ refrigerated flaky layers biscuits
2 tablespoons Corn meal
Cooking spray
1 cup Old El Paso® Salsa Thick N Chunky Make Mine Medium or flavor of choice

1. Blend the cheese, chiles, garlic, lime, and salt. Chill this mixture in the freezer while completing the next two steps, or for make-ahead preparations, cover and refrigerate for up to two days before continuing.
2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly spray a 13×18 inch jellyroll pan with cooking spray and sprinkle with corn meal.
3. Separate each biscuit into two pieces along the layers and flatten them slightly to make 16 rounds.
4. Form each empanadita by placing 1 rounded tablespoon of the chilled cheese mixture in the center of a round, folding the dough around the filling to create a semi-circle pocket, and crimping the edges closed with a fork.
5. Bake for 10-14 minutes until golden-brown and crispy.
6. Arrange on a serving platter around a small bowl of salsa. Serve warm. Makes 16.

Line a jelly roll pan with parchment paper and give it a quick rub down with a little butter. Then throw the rest of the butter, the sugar, and the almonds into a sauce pan on medium to medium high heat. Cook, stirring now and then, until it’s a rich caramel color and the ingredients are well blended — “soft crack” stage if you’ve got a candy thermometer, but I didn’t and it turned out fine. Pour it in the jelly roll pan, spreading it out quickly (dont’ worry if it doesn’t go edge-to-edge) and cutting score marks with a knife to form 1-1.5″ pieces. It hardens quickly so dont’ worry if you can’t cut all the way through. Then, while it’s still hot, sprinkle the chocolate chips over it all. Give them a minute to begin to melt, then spread them into a thin layer.

Throw the whole pan in the freezer for about 20 minutes (just to speed the cooling process) then you can lift it neatly from the parchment and break it along the score lines into about 70-90 pieces, depending on how thin you spread it and how big the pieces are.

Here’s the kicker. Each of the 90 pieces of candy has about 60 calories in it. It’ll store nicely in an airtight container, as long as you put that container in a place cool enough to keep your chocolate from melting, assuming you hide it well. Oh, and if you’ve got several pieces that didn’t turn out quite right (broken edges or whatever) instead of gobbling them like I did, you can break them into bits and keep them for ice cream toppping… mmmmmmm!

1 tablespoon mayonnaise

1/2 teaspoon vinegar

1/2 teaspoon prepared mustard

1-2 slices of ham lunch-meat, chopped finely

Green Food Coloring

Dill Weed

Slice the eggs in half lengthwise. Place the egg whites on a serving plate. Take out the yolks and use a fork to smash them thoroughly in a small bowl. Blend in the mustard, vinegar, mayonnaise, and then add a few drops of food coloring to make the yolks a lovely bright green. Add the ham.

Spoon the yolk mixture into each egg slice (or for a party, pipe into the eggs using an icing bag and a large star tip), and garnish with a sprig of dill weed.