Pumpkin Patch

It’s getting to be Fall, my favourite time of the year, and it’s our final ice cream blog so what would be more perfect than a Fall dessert? This time of the year you start to think about leaves changing and Thanksgiving and also Halloween. One thing that you tend to see a lot of this time of the year and leading up to Halloween is pumpkins, specifically pumpkin flavoured things. Our final ice cream flavour is called “Pumpkin Patch” by Brusters. This flavour has pumpkin ice cream mixed with Graham Ribbons and crunchy pie pieces.

Something that we have never made before on our blog is pumpkin pies so I am going to share my go to pumpkin pie recipe with a twist, we’re gonna make little pumpkin pie tarts.

I know some people go all out and make their own filling from scratch by buying a pumpkin and grinding it all up and they make their own crusts too, but when you’re busy and working it can be hard so don’t feel guilty going out and buying canned pumpkin and premade pie shells.

With that said, you will need the following to make your mini pies.

A package of frozen tart shells (24 come in a pack)

1 can of pumpkin (15 ounces)

1 can of sweetened condensed milk (14 ounces)

2 eggs

1 ½ tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. ginger

½ tsp. salt

Preheat you oven to 425 degrees.

While it’s preheating, mix the pumpkin, milk, eggs, spices, and salt together in your mixer.

Pour into the shells and bake for 15 minutes.

Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and bake for about 30 minutes or until a knife inserted about inch from the crust comes out clean. Now this is how it’s done when making it as a big pie, tarts may take less time, but keep an eye on them while they bake and take note for the next time when you make them.

Let the mini pies cool. While they cool, whip up some cream to serve on top.

Yum! It’s Fall!

Monkey Puppet

So this week’s flavour is a very modern and untraditional ice cream flavour, the flavour is “Monkey Madness” by Brusters. The main ice cream flavour is banana which makes sense because monkeys and bananas are often associated. Stirred into that banana ice cream base are marshmallows and a candy called Buckeyes (which are a peanut butter fudge ball partially dipped in chocolate). If you’re a peanut butter and banana fan than this flavour is for you!

We’re not going to make anything with those ingredients, instead, we are going to make a monkey inspired craft. We thought a fun little kid craft to make would be monkey puppets. They’re really simple and would be a perfect activity to do when your child has over some of their new friends from school (since school started up this week).

So gather up the following...regular brown paper bags, some cardstock for the monkey parts (light pink, dark brown, lighter brown/beige, cream, and black), glue, scissors, a pencil, and “monkey parts.”

First of all you want to figure out how you are going to make the parts of the monkey. We have found a template here and printed that off and then cut it out and traced it on our cardstock. You can freehand drawing a monkey or use a cutting device like a Silhouette if you have.

Trace the inside of the ears in pink, the head and ears dark brown, the body, nose, and mouth in the light brown, around the eyes in cream, and the pupils in black.

Once you have all of the parts, you can start gluing them on/together.

Glue the eyes onto the cream eye piece. Then glue the inside of the ears onto the ears and the big eye piece onto the face and then to complete the face, glue the ears onto the head.

Next you can glue the head onto the flap of the bag and then the body just underneath the head. Now glue the nose on the flap so it partially covers the eye piece (draw on the nostrils before gluing) and the mouth part just under it. Finally glue the tail on the back of the paper bag near the bottom.

We took a look at our finished product and noticed that something was missing...a tongue! When you open up your little monkey puppet’s mouth it just seemed too empty so we cut a tongue out of red cardstock and then added a line down the middle to make it look like a tongue.

Now it’s done!