Strawberry Pretzel Dessert and #Library Card Adventure

How’s your summer going? If you love hot weather, I’m sure you are really enjoying the steamy temperatures we’ve had in Michigan recently. I personally am not a big fan of high temps and sticky humidity, but I know for some of you it’s just the ticket. All I can say is, thank goodness for air conditioning! 😊

This past weekend we wanted a light, summery dessert, one that did not require turning on the oven to bake. I recalled a strawberry pretzel thingy I used to make and dug out the recipe. Turns out I did have to bake the crust, but for only ten minutes, and so I decided it was a go.

And I’m glad I did. It was delicious, with a great mix of salty and sweet because the secret ingredient in the crust is pretzel; and cream cheese in the middle layer giving it that yummy cheesecake taste as well.

I ripped this recipe out of a magazine many years ago, so I cannot give proper credit to the creator because I do not know who that is. If I had to guess, I think it may have been from a free Kraft magazine I used to receive in the mail. And that would make sense, as they are the manufactures of PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, and probably created the recipe to help sell cream cheese. In any case, it’s a recipe worth trying. Here we go…

What You Need

2 cups finely crushed pretzels

½ cup sugar, divided

2/3 cup butter or margarine, melted

12 oz. cream cheese, softened

2 Tbsp. milk

8 oz. container of COOL WHIP Whipped Topping

2 cups boiling water

1 pkg. (6 oz.) JELL-O Strawberry Flavor Gelatin

1 ½ cups cold water

4 cups fresh strawberries, sliced

What You Do

1.) Heat oven to 350⁰ F.

2.) Combine pretzel crumbs, ¼ cup sugar and butter; press into bottom of 12x9-inch pan. Bake 10 minutes. Cool completely.

3.) Beat cream cheese, remaining ¼ cup sugar and milk with mixer until blended. Stir in COOL WHIP; spread over crust. Refrigerate until ready to use.

4.) Add boiling water to gelatin mix in large bowl; stir 2 minutes until completely dissolved. Stir is cold water. Refrigerate 1-1/2 hours or until thickened. Stir in berries; spoon over cream cheese layer.

5.) Refrigerate three hours or until firm.

As you can see, it’s a pretty simple recipe that is easy to prepare. You have to be patient and allow plenty of time for the JELL-O to set, but other than that, it doesn’t really take a lot of time to make. We thoroughly enjoyed the results. 😊

I hope you get a chance to give it a try.

#Library Card Adventures

I’m going to change direction here and ask you if you’ve ever heard of a Library Card Adventure? It is an invention of Instagram, a tag used by libraries to create some fun. The basic premise is that when you’re traveling and taking pictures of sites, you pull out your library card and take a picture of it in front of the site. Or, you could just be out and about around town, say at the park or your local farmer’s market, and snap the photo. Anywhere you take your library card on an adventure does the trick. And then you post the picture to Instagram, tag it with your library’s name, and hopefully it gets reposted to the Instagram account.

I’ve been doing this for years and have gotten some pretty weird looks from people probably wondering why I’m taking pictures of my library card. Oh, well. It never stopped me from doing it the next time. 😊

Taking the picture can be a bit tricky. Because your library card is up close, and the spot you’re photographing is in the distance, one or the other is going to be a bit blurry as the other becomes the focus of the camera. You can either let the card be fuzzy and the site in focus, or vice versa. I normally want the library card in focus and allow the site to be fuzzy, because it is a LIBRARY CARD adventure after all.

Are you traveling a bit this summer? Or, having stay-cation fun at home? Either can be great settings for library card adventures. Might you try taking some library card adventure photos yourself and share them with my blog? If you do, please email me at graib@cidlibrary.org and I’ll include them here in a future post. Or, they might just get reposted to our @cidlib Instagram feed. We’d love to see what adventures you’re having with your library card this year.

Meanwhile, I’m going to share with you some of my favorite library card adventures from my own travels the last few years. They're fun to do. Give them a try!

Whether you are out and about, or vacationing at home, please be safe. And please wear your mask. 😊 Take care!

At the One World Trade Center in New York City

Overlooking the town of Vernazza in the Cinque Terra region of Italy

The Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island

Duomo di Milano in Milan, Italy

High on the hill, the Edinburgh Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Looking down a canal in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Embroider a Garden of Flowers

Wow, summer is fully upon us: hot days, fireworks at night, and beautiful flowers everywhere. I hope you are having fun and staying cool. Road trip anybody? Pure Michigan is all around us! 😊

For several years now, I’ve offered a program at our library called Maker Magic! We gather together and create a new craft each month, usually seasonally based. I have a great core group that’s been coming for years, but we get new faces each month as well. Below are a few pictures from past Maker Magics!

It’s a program for adults, but parents can bring their children to craft with them if they are twelve years or older. I’ve always resisted making easy crafts or kid-like crafts though. Rather, I challenge the kids, and sometimes the adults as well, to learn new crafting skills. I’m hopeful that maybe I’ve even turned some folks onto skills, such as embroidery and cross-stitch, that have become a new passion or hobby for them.

Our spring programs were wiped out when the library was shut-down because of the Coronavirus pandemic. And at this point, the future of fall programming is still up in the air. But as we work hard to provide programming virtually or at-home, I came up with a summer Maker Magic Take-it and Make-It program. I picked one interesting craft and created 42 kits for patrons to take home and make on their own. Registration was required and all 42 kits have been spoken for.

So, while you may have missed out on getting a kit, I’m going to share the craft and instructions with you here in my blog. As my Maker Magic regulars can attest to, I like to write very detailed instructions. Please read and follow them along in order, and you’ll do fine. Any questions, feel free to email me at graib@cidlibrary.org.

If you make this craft, please take a selfie of you and your finished project and send it along to me at the above email address. I plan on posting your wonderful creations to the library’s Instagram account in the near future. You can also post it to your own Instagram account and tag the library, cidlib, and I’ll repost it to ours. Good luck!

I found this craft on Pinterest. Actually, what I found on Pinterest was a picture, no instructions included. It was pulled from something called google.co.za which I discovered is the Google search engine for South Africa. To the right, is the original picture I found. I liked it immediately, but I tweaked it a bit as you can see. I like the results. I hope you will, too! Here we go...

Grow Flower Button Embroidery

MATERIALS NEEDED

Seven buttons 8-inch hoop 11-inch piece of fabric (we’ll discuss fabric types below) 9-inch square of felt Green embroidery floss: I used DMC 367 Embroidery Needle Scissors Tacky Craft glue (such as Aleene’s) or a glue gun

Fabric discussion: Tightly woven ​even-weave fabrics are best for embroidery. You can use fabrics such as cotton, linen, rayon and polyester blends. I used broadcloth, which is a cotton.

About the needle: embroidery needles are sharp needles with larger eyes than a regular sewing needle, so that you are able to thread it with embroidery floss.

1.) Choose the buttons you want to use on your project. You can use however many you want, but seven fits nicely on an 8-inch hoop.

2.) Plan out where you want to place your chosen buttons on the fabric. HINT: Once I figured out how I wanted my buttons placed as flowers, I took a picture of the placement to refer back to as needed.

3.) To start, lightly sketch with a pencil the “grow” and grass line on your fabric. HINT: Practice sketching the line on scrap paper before sketching on the fabric. Place the hoop over your scrap paper to figure out how long to draw the grass line. Next, you will lightly sketch the stem lines for your flowers, based on where you want them and your flowers to be. You will sew directly over all lines as you stitch, but having them lightly there will help you to know where to stitch.

4.) It’s time to put the fabric in your hoop. Unscrew the fastener a few turns and separate the two parts of the hoop.

Place your fabric over the inner hoop without the fastener. Center the design so that the “grow” line is placed as in the sample, just below the middle.

Now place the outer hoop over the fabric and lower hoop. You may have to unscrew the fastener a bit more to get it to fit over the fabric.

Tighten the fabric in the hoop so that it’s taut and easy to embroider on. Pull the fabric as tight as you can, stopping to tighten the screw on the fastener. It’s kind of a process: pull fabric, tighten the fastener. Keep doing it till you get it right. All the while you want to watch the design on the fabric and keep it centered in the hoop.

5.) The thread you embroider with is known as six-strand floss in the craft world. We are going to separate the floss and just use three strands at a time. While separating floss can be a little tricky, we’re doing it for two reasons. One, it will make it easier to thread your needle. Secondly, it can be harder to embroider with six strands of floss, and we don’t want that to happen, especially if this is your first-time embroidering.

How do you split your floss? Start by cutting a length of floss, about 18 inches in length. Please don’t cut it longer: if it’s too long, it tangles easily.

At one end of your cut piece of floss, with your finger, separate out three strands from the six. Hold three strands in one hand, and three strands in the other hand. Now slowly, and gently, pull the two groups of strands apart.

If they start to get tangled, stop! Hold them up and allow them to dangle freely. They should untwist, so that you can continue to pull the two groups apart. Proceed in this fashion till you have two separate lengths of three-strand floss. Good job!

6.) Set the one length of floss aside to use later. Thread the other length of floss through the needle. Do not bring the two ends of floss together. That would be a double thread. We are using the single thread method. (If you use the double thread method you’ve made your three-strand floss back into six strands. Don’t do it!)

At one end of your floss, tie a knot.

7.) We’re going to use a split stitch to create the embroidered design. NOTE: I got the instructions and pictures for how to do the split stitch and the lazy daisy stitch from a website called allpeoplequilt.com. Here’s a link to their website:

https://www.allpeoplequilt.com/how-to-quilt/embellishing/basic-embroidery-stitches-pictures-diagrams-and-how-tos

How-to do a split-stitch: Pull the needle up at A and insert the needle back into the fabric at B, about 1⁄8"–1⁄4" away from A. Then, holding thread atop the stitching line, bring the needle back up at C, piercing through the center of the first stitch, and pull the thread down at D so it lies flat against the fabric. Continue in the same manner, pulling with equal tautness after each stitch. HINT: In this diagram, they started stitching from the right side.

Embroider the grow and grass line first. Start at one edge and embroider straight across. DON’T stitch the stems at this time; you’ll go back and stitch each stem and sew on its flower one-by-one.

As you’re stitching the grow/grass line, you can make bigger stitches on the straight-line parts. But when you get into “grow” you’ll want to make smaller stitches as you go around the curve.

HINT: as you are embroidering, a couple of things to keep an eye on. As you’re stitching, the floss tends to get a little twisted. From time to time, let go of the needle, hold the hoop up, and allow the needle to dangle; it will untwist itself using this process. Also, it’s important to keep your fabric taut as you work your piece. Pull the fabric tight again and tighten the fastener a bit from time to time. It’s easier to stitch on fabric that’s pulled tight.

When you finish with one length of floss and have only a short piece left, you’ll tie a knot on the back. Finish with a stitch so that the thread and needle are on the backside of the fabric. Run the needle under a stitch on the back and pull through slowly creating a loop. Run the needle into the loop and pull gently but firmly to make the knot. Take the needle off of the floss. Trim the floss to about ½ inch from the floss.

Re-thread your needle with floss, tie a knot and continue stitching. When you get to the end of the grow/grass line use the same knot technique to end the line.

8.) For each flower, stitch the stem up from the grow/grass line, using the same split stitch. When you get to the top of the stem, sew on one button. HINT: Some of your buttons may be two-hole buttons and some may be four-hole buttons. Four-hole buttons can be sewn either of the two ways shown above.

9.) When you’ve finished sewing on a button, the floss should still be on the back side of the fabric. Now you’ll use the lazy daisy stitch to add leaves.

Add as many or as few leaves as you want. You’ll run the thread down the back of the fabric, taking a stitch or two in the stitches on back, till you get where you want to add a leaf. You’ll add leaves using the lazy daisy stitch.

How-to to make a lazy daisy stitch. Pull the needle up at A and form a loop of thread on the fabric surface. Holding the loop in place, insert the needle back into the fabric at B, about 1⁄16" away from A. Bring the needle tip out at C and cross it over the trailing thread, keeping the thread as flat as possible. Pull the needle and trailing thread until the loop lies flat against the fabric. Push the needle through to the back at D to secure the loop. HINT: A is the part of the stitch that attaches the leaf to the stem. Pull the Pull the needle up at A through the point on the stem where you want you leaf to begin.

After the leaves have been added, you’ve finished embroidering. Great job!

10.) It’s time to properly finish the project and make it ready to hang or give as a gift.

Tighten your fabric one more time and make sure the fastener is screwed tight.

Set the hoop down and trim all the way around in a circular fashion. Trim the excess fabric to about an inch. Don’t trim it too short or it will be hard to do the next step.

11.) Set the hoop down again with the back side up. We’re going to glue the excess fabric down as in the sample picture to the left. (This picture is from a previous Maker Magic project, so don’t be shocked it doesn’t look like yours’ does.)

Using either tacky glue or your glue gun, run a generous line of glue around the top edge of your hoop (NOT the inside edge as it could bleed through to the front.)

Pull the excess fabric over the glue and press it down. I usually work in sections and do about a quarter of the hoop at a time, so the glue doesn’t dry before I get to it. It’s very important that all the excess fabric is pulled neat and tidy into the back of the hoop so it doesn’t hang out, impeding the placement of the felt circle.

12.) When that’s done, place the hoop, bottom side down, on the square of felt. Trace around the outside of the hoop.

Cut the circle out. Because you want the felt circle to be slightly smaller than the hoop so that it does not hang over the edge, cut the felt just INSIDE the line you drew.

Run another line of glue around the TOP edge of the hoop. Carefully place the felt circle onto the back of your hoop. Press the edge firmly all the way around, helping the felt to adhere to the hoop.

Felt side up, allow it to sit till the glue is dried.

And now your Grow Flower Button Embroidery project is complete. I think it’s a super cute craft. Considering all I had to work from was a picture, I felt pretty good about how mine turned out, to be honest. And I hope you feel the same way about yours.

That’s all for now. I’m sorry my posts aren’t coming as often these days. As we slowly reopen the library, I go into the library to work some days and on other days I'm able to work from home. It’s a very busy time for us all at our library, and that means, unfortunately, I don’t get the chance to post to the blog as often as I’d like.

Take care. Stay safe. And please, wear your mask. 😊

P.S. Check out a few more shots from past Maker Magic programs. We have lots of fun and everyone goes home happy, with amazing crafts they magically made themselves.

Finding Joy in Cake Pops

When’s the last time you made a cute and creative bake? 😊 If it’s been awhile, I’m here to help. Today I’m going to teach you how to make frog cake pops. But I can’t take credit for them. They are the creation of a delightful young baker named, Kim-Joy.

Kim-Joy was a contestant on the 2018 season of the Great British Baking Show. Both a fan favorite and a finalist on her season of the show, Kim-Joy has gone on to baking greatness as she spreads her unique brand of baking whimsy. She is known for her adorable cakes and treats that are often of woodland creatures. She has a large following on both Instagram and Twitter.

And last year, she published her first cookbook, Baking with Kim-Joy. FYI, CIDL owns a copy of her cookbook, and you can check it out now. Place a hold online or by calling the library, 248-625-2212. You’ll then be contacted by a staff member who’ll schedule a curbside pick-up time for you. Easy-peasy.

My daughter follows Kim-Joy on Instagram (@kimjoyskitchen) and brought the adorable froggies to my attention. (Side-bar: Daughter Laura is spending the summer with us, taking a break from being holed up from the virus in her apartment in New York City.) Anyway, we decided to make the frog cake pops our baking project last weekend. I found Kim-Joy’s recipe online via her website. Here’s the link if you’d like to check it out for yourself:

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jun/03/kim-joys-recipe-for-lemon-and-matcha-cake-pop-frogs

(Kim-Joy's frog cake pops)

Ultimately, I decided her recipe was a bit complicated for me – it uses metric measuring units – and I wasn’t in the mood for doing the conversion math. So, we put our own spin on Kim-Joys creation and bought a box cake mix and canned frosting! Horror of horrors, it’s not such a bad concept for cake pops. By the time you smush the cake, add the frosting, ball them up and dip them in oodles of chocolate, you can’t even tell they started with a box cake mix.

So that’s what we did. Because we winged the making of our cake pops, rather than write up a formal recipe, I’m going to take you through the process, step-by-step.

From the picture, you can see basically all the needed ingredients.

We used a standard 9x13 cake mix; Betty Crocker Party Rainbow Chip was the flavor we went with.

12 oz. can of frosting – we used Betty Crocker Whipped Cream Cheese.

Two 10 oz. packages of Ghirardelli White Vanilla Flavor Melting Wafers

Parasol Picks

Betty Crocker candy google eyes and black gel to decorate with.

Not shown: green food color for the frosting

This is how we did it: Start by baking the cake per the instructions on the box. After ten minutes, remove the cake from the cake pan and allow to fully cool.

When the cake has cooled, crumble it up with your hands into a large bowl. As Kim-Joy says, crumble it until it’s “bread crumb-like.”

Add the can of frosting to the crumbled cake and mix it well.

Using your hands, roll the mixture into balls. (I make mine about 1 ½ inches in size.) Try to make them as smooth and round as possible. Depending on how big you roll them, you should get about 30 cake pops. Place them on a large cookie sheet as you roll them. I lined the cookie sheet with wax paper for easy removal, especially after they are dipped in chocolate.

Place the cookie sheet in the fridge for about two hours or until very firm.

When the cake balls are firm, melt the white chocolate per the instructions on the bag. I like to use this glass Pyrex measuring cup to melt chocolate in. (I initially melted just one bag of chocolate. But the chocolate wasn’t deep enough for dipping into. So, I recommend melting both bags of chocolate together to begin with.)

Add green food color, a few drops at a time, until you get the shade of green you want your frogs to be.

Have your frog eyes handy and ready to go in. The dipping chocolate sets quickly and you have to act fast to get them in before that happens.

Dip the end of the umbrella stick into the chocolate (about 1/3 inch), then stick this into the base of the cake ball. Repeat till all are done and leave to set.

When all have umbrella sticks, start the dipping process with the cake balls that had their sticks put in first.

Dip each cake pop into the chocolate, covering the whole surface of the cake. Let the excess drip off, then place on the cookie sheet with wax paper. Add the google eyes while the chocolate coating is still wet. (Full disclosure: my pictures above show we didn't do what I just told you to do in the steps above. Rather than put the umbrella sticks in first and then dip, I decided to dip first and then add the umbrellas. Big mistake, because the cake balls kept falling off the skewer I was using to dip with. The step of securing your stick into the cake pop using frosting to "cement" it in is an important one. I forgot this because I hadn't made them in so long and assumed I knew best. Jokes on me!)

When all are dipped and the chocolate has dried, add a smiley mouth using the black gel. We found the gel came out pretty thick. So, we ended up squeezing a tiny amount of the gel directly onto the end of a toothpick and then painting on the smile.

That’s it, adorable frog pops are done! What do you think? I hope you have a chance to give them a try.

We ran out of umbrellas with six cake balls to go. Although it’s been a few years, I’ve made cake pops before, and fortunately, I still had a pack of cake pop sticks in the cupboard.

Sometimes it pays to never throw things out. 😊 I also had some pastel sprinkles in there and decided to use those to embellish this last mini-batch of cake pops.

I dipped the stick ends in chocolate – as with the umbrella ends – and then stuck the stick into the cake ball and then let them sit a few minutes before dipping the cake balls in the chocolate. I sprinkled the pastel sprinkles quickly to finish them off. I love the little frogs, but these pretty pastel cake pops are fun, too.

Cake pops are easy, tasty, and look special. Most of the time. The chocolate gets tricky to work with when you get down to the bottom of the bowl and there’s not much left. Check out these frog pops. They were the last two that we made, and we ended up poring the chocolate over them by spoonful. Can you tell? They don’t look so well, but they still tasted good. 😊

By the way, are you a fan of the Great British Baking Show? If the answer is no, let me fill you in on the joy of this TV show imported from Britain where it’s known as the Great British Bake Off. A television baking competition, it’s now in it’s tenth season. I like to say it’s a kinder, gentler reality show than anything running on American TV these days. It’s all about the baking and judging and not behind the scenes drama. And, the competitors actually root for each other to do well, some of the time. 😉

Each week’s show features a different theme (cake, bread, pastry, etc.) The contestants compete in three baking challenges each week:

The Signature Bake, where they make their tried-and-true favorite recipe of that week’s theme.

The Technical Bake, where the judges give them one basic recipe, the same ingredients and instructions, and expect perfection in their bake.

The Showstopper Bake, where the contestants go all out to make the most impressive, creative, and delicious bake.

It’s all good fun with funny show hosts, judges with personality plus, and down to earth contestants who love to bake. I can highly recommend watching The Great British Baking Show. Good news, the library owns all five seasons of the show that have been released in America. Pick them up via a hold/curbside pick-up.

Pup-Date

If you read my May 23 blog-post titled Pizza, Puzzles, and Puppy Paws, you know we’ve been self-grooming our dog, Baxter, during the pandemic. It’s been a challenge as he does not like to sit still for our grooming shenanigans. I decided to give it a try again this week with the help of daughter Laura. We tag-teamed him and were able to trim his ears, paws and whatever else he’d let us cut. I spent a lot of time especially on his ears. I think he’s looking much better now, all things considered. Check out his before and after pictures.

Before and after and all-tuckered out.

That’s it for this week. Take care. Stay safe. Find joy. Bake some fun. 😊