Category: Kitchen
Strawberry Pretzel Salad
Ingredients –
2 cups crushed pretzels
3 tablespoons sugar
2 ½ cups boiling water
6 oz pack strawberry jello
8 oz cream cheese, softened
2 cups mini marshmallows
¾ cup melted butter
8 oz dessert topping
10 oz frozen strawberries
½ cup powdered sugar
Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine the melted butter, sugar and crushed pretzels. Press this mixture into a 9 x 13 inch baking pan and bake for 15 minutes.
Set this aside to cool.
Cream the powdered sugar with the cream cheese, and then fold in the marshmallows and dessert topping. Spread this over the pretzel crust.
Mix the jello in boiling water, adding the strawberry juice. Stir in the strawberries. When the mixture has thickened a bit, pour it over the cream cheese layer. Refrigerate until set.
(Serves 8 )
Bird of Paradise Napkins
click here to learn how to fold your own
Taffy
This is one part activity, one part party food. Kids will enjoy the pulling, cutting and shaping of the taffy. Guests can save their candies in waxed paper and take them home for their families.
Ingredients
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/4 cup water
2 tbsp. white vinegar
1 1/2 tsp. butter, plus extra for the pan and for coating hands
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Directions
Combine sugar, water, vinegar and butter in a heavy, nonreactive pan, and stir over low heat until the sugar dissolves.
Raise heat and cook quickly, about 20 minutes, without stirring, until a teaspoon of the mixture dropped into a glass of cold water forms a hard ball.
Watch the boil carefully so the taffy does not burn. Turn off heat and add the vanilla extract.
Pour the taffy onto a generously buttered platter or cookie sheet with low sides. When it is cool enough to handle (adults do everything up to this part), kids grease their hands with butter, take a lump of taffy, and pull and stretch it until it is light and slightly firm.
The more they stretch, pull and twist the candy, the more air they will blend into it, and the more like beach taffy it will get.
Using scissors, cut the lump of candy into bite-size pieces. When completely cool, wrap each piece in waxed paper.
Makes 45 1-inch candies.
Prevent Brain Freeze
Q: Ever get a ‘Brain Freeze’ while eating ice cream? Why does it happen? 
What can you do about it? Is it preventable?
A: Sensitive nerves located above the roof of the mouth may respond to the cold temperatures of ice cream with the dilation of blood vessels; this dilation, in turn, can cause a headache. This type of headache vanishes quickly, but to avoid it entirely, Dr. Jason Rosenberg (director of the Johns Hopkins Headache Center) recommends the following course of action:
1) consume ice cream slowly, or
2) before swallowing it, warm up the ice cream by holding it in the front of your mouth for a short time.
The latter method has the added benefit of allowing you to savor each bite (or lick) a moment longer.
