Recipe – MinnieVanMom

Disney Dinner & A Movie Night: Frozen

Published on February 28, 2021 by LeslieLeave a comment

Well, we finally did it. We watched Frozen.

I’ll be honest, while I have always liked the movie Frozen, I don’t love it, and I don’t think it lives up to all of its hype. In my opinion, Frozen became such a popular movie in part thanks to outstanding marketing. Tangled came out just a few years before Frozen but had terrible marketing and wasn’t nearly as popular (but I think Tangled is the better movie). I feel like I have been subconsciously putting off watching this movie as a family, but it really did make for a great movie night.

The movie Frozen tells the story of two sisters, Anna and Elsa. Elsa possesses supernatural powers that allow her to create ice and snow. After accidentally setting off an eternal winter, Elsa isolates herself. Anna heads out on an adventure, with her new companion Kristoff and his reindeer Sven, to find Elsa and bring her home.

I wanted to get Brooklyn something special to wear for our movie night, so I ordered a soft play dress from Little Adventures. I know that I have talked about their dress-up clothes before, but they truly are my favorite! Not only are their dresses soft, but you can throw them in the washing machine when they get dirty. The dress I ordered is the Alpine Princess Coronation Dress, which looks just like Anna’s dress on Coronation Day (make sure you check out Little Adventures and use code MVM15 to save 15% at checkout!).

Each time I plan a Disney Movie Night for my family, I do a lot of brainstorming about what I should make for our meal. I try to find foods that are toddler-friendly and easy to cook, but also along with the movie. For Frozen, I was inspired by some of the most popular songs in the film. In the song “Love Is An Open Door,” Anna and Hanz sing about finishing each other’s sandwiches, so I quickly decided sandwiches would be our main course. I broke out the panini press (that I haven’t used in years) to make our turkey and swiss sandwiches a little more exciting, and I even used it to make Brooklyn a grilled cheese.

For our sides, I made us each a “Melted Olaf” along with some “Frozen Hearts.” For the Frozen Hearts, I cut some strawberries into the shape of a heart, dipped them in warm white chocolate, sprinkled them with blue sprinkles, and allowed them to cool. Below you will find the full recipe for my Melted Olaf.

Melted Olaf

16 ounce sour cream

1 packet Hidden Valley Ranch Dip Mix

carrots

pretzel sticks

black olives

Carefully stir the Hidden Valley Ranch Mix in the sour cream. Once the ranch dip is ready, place a scoop of ranch into a small bowl or cup. Add two pretzel sticks, a carrot, and two black olives (Olaf’s arms, nose, and eyes). Enjoy!

In the song “For The First Time In Forever,” Anna sings about stuffing chocolate in her face. For our dessert, I knew I needed to make chocolate cake balls. I made cake balls for our Inside Out Night, and they are truly the easiest dessert to make. To make cake balls, you bake a cake according to the directions, and once cool, you crumble the cake and stir in a tub of frosting. Once the cake and frosting are combined, scoop out the mix, roll into bite-size balls, and dip in melted chocolate. Brooklyn has a sweet tooth, and I think stuffing her face with chocolate was her favorite part of the night!

Brooklyn sat through the entire movie and LOVED it! She also loved twirling around in her dress to all of the music in the film. Although we don’t do these movies as often as we once did, we love them and hope to do them more often. There are so many fun things coming up in the next couple of weeks, and I can’t wait to share it all with you. Please subscribe to my blog if you haven’t done so already!

Sending love and magic,

Minnie Mouse Bow Strawberries

Published on January 22, 2021 by LeslieLeave a comment

Today is National Polka Dot Day, and I figured there was no better way to celebrate than by making a fun recipe inspired by my favorite polka dot wearing mouse, Minnie. These candy-covered strawberry bows will be a hit for anyone who loves Minnie Mouse as much as I do.

Minnie Mouse Bow Strawberries

You Will Need:

Strawberries

Red Candy Melts

White Chocolate Chips

Toothpicks

Wax Paper

Directions

Rinse the strawberries and pat dry. Remove the stems and leaves and then slice each strawberry in half lengthwise.

Place the halved strawberries point to point and connect them using a toothpick (they should look like a bow).

Melt red candy melts according to package directions. Carefully dip the bow shaped strawberries into the red candy melts.

Set candy covered strawberries on wax paper. Before the candy hardens, place white chocolate chip “polka dots” on strawberries. Allow candy coating to harden and enjoy!

Cheers to our girl, Minnie, and all things polka dots!

Sending love and magic.

Disney Dinner & A Movie Night: The Incredibles

Published on January 16, 2021 by LeslieLeave a comment

After an incredible week of finally getting my Instagram account back, I felt the only appropriate movie to watch this week was The Incredibles. (Yes, you heard that right, I finally got it back. Make sure to follow my @minnievanmom Instagram account!)

The Incredibles is a Pixar movie about a family of superheroes. They are forced to hide their superpowers after the public becomes concerned, but they save the world in the end. Although my daughter has never seen The Incredibles, I knew she would love all of the superhero fun.

I decided to start our Friday with a fun activity, and I made a new sensory box for my daughter. To make this, I first soaked black, red, orange, and yellow water beads overnight on Thursday. On Friday morning, I poured all of the water beads into a large, flat plastic tub and added some of our Incredibles figurines. I then gave my daughter the option to play with her hands or with a pair of Incredibles gloves (she loved both ways).

This sensory box gave us hours of fun on Friday during the day (and while we watched our movie). She loved burying the figurines in the water beads and digging them out.

After playing with her sensory box all morning, my daughter took a nap, and when she woke up, I surprised her with her own Incredibles costume! Of course, the first thing she wanted to do was go outside and play in her “superhero clubhouse.” She had so much fun running around, being silly, and getting ready to watch The Incredibles.

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to make for dinner, and my husband inspired me to make something I like to call “HONEY, WHERE IS MY SUPER SOUP?!” (just one of my favorite quotes from Frozone in the movie). My husband is on the keto diet, so I found this Creamy Taco Soup recipe from Gimme Delicious which is keto-friendly and really good. It’s cold outside, so it was nice to curl up with a warm bowl of soup to watch the movie. I also made an “incredible” topping bar for our soup.

Dessert is always important for our movie nights and I made something a little silly, “Brownies Edna Mode”. These brownies contain M&M’s and are topped with vanilla ice cream and a pair of chocolate glasses (that look similar to Edna Modes’ glasses in the movie). Below you will find the recipe for this delicious treat.

Brownies Edna Mode

Brownie Mix

M&Ms (red, yellow, orange and brown)

Vanilla Ice Cream

Melting Chocolate

Plastic Bag

Wax Paper

Start by mixing brownies according to the package and stir in some M&Ms. Bake the brownies according to the package.

While the brownies are baking, melt chocolate in the microwave. When the chocolate is melted, scoop into a plastic sandwich bag.

Make a tiny cut in the corner of the plastic bag and carefully pipe tiny chocolate glasses onto the wax paper (they don’t have to be perfect!).

Put the chocolate glasses in the freezer to set. Once brownies are done baking and cooled, top with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a pair of chocolate glasses. Enjoy!

I’m so glad we are back to doing our Disney Dinner & A Movie Nights again! We haven’t decided what we are doing next week, but I can’t wait to tell you all about it.

Sending love and magic.

Disney Dinner & A Movie Night: Hocus Pocus

Published on October 24, 2020October 26, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

Halloween is a little less than a week away, and we are trying desperately to cram in as much spooky fun as possible! Last week for our Disney Dinner & A Movie Night, we wanted to watch another Halloween movie, and we settled on Hocus Pocus.

Hocus Pocus is a movie about a group of kids who accidentally frees a coven of witches. With a magical cat’s help, they have to steal the witches’ book of spells to make the witches go away forever. It is such a classic Halloween movie, and I love watching it. I knew that this movie might be a little over my two-year-old daughter’s head, but I still thought it would be a fun movie to enjoy together as a family.

I wanted to make ALL of the Halloween treats this week. I had a tough time narrowing down the foods I was going to make, but we ended up with a delicious menu. Let me share what we had!

For our main course, we had Stuffed Jack-O-Lanterns. This super easy entree is one of my favorite things that I have ever made. I started by cutting off the top of 4 orange bell peppers and cleaning out the inside. Then, I took an Exacto knife and “carved” a jack-o-lantern face in each pumpkin. I browned some Italian sausage, added rice, marinara, and spices, and then topped them with mozzarella cheese. I baked these cute stuffed peppers in the oven at 425 for 30 minutes; they were cute and delicious!

For the sides, we had Witches Fingers, which were just frozen mozzarella sticks that I baked in the oven and served with marinara sauce on the side (yum!). I wanted to make some caramel apples (which I thought were perfect for Halloween) but then decided caramel apples could be too messy with a toddler. I ended up slicing some Honeycrisp Apples and served them with caramel dip. The perfect compromise!

I made some cute Witches Brew Brownie Bites for dessert, and they were so good. I wanted to share this recipe with you because it ended up being perfect! Funnily enough, I never planned on putting the brownie bites in cauldrons, but I had some laying around, and the brownie bites fit perfectly on top!

I found the tiny cauldrons that I used on Amazon, and I am an Amazon Affiliate, so if you purchase them from the link, I will receive a small commission.

Witches Brew Brownie Bites

Tiny Cauldrons

Brownie Bites

Vanilla Frosting

Green Food Coloring

Green Sixlets

Purple Sixlets

Green Sprinkles/Nonpareils in different sizes

I started by placing a brownie bite top of each little cauldron. Next, I added green food coloring to the vanilla frosting and mixed it around until it was the perfect green color. When the frosting was ready to go, I scooped and frosted the top of each brownie bite (this doesn’t have to be perfect, it can look like witches’ brew that’s bubbling over). Finally, I topped each little green brownie bite with different Sixlets candies and sprinkles to look like bubbles, and that’s it!

We only watched about half of the movie until my daughter decided that she had enough and wanted to watch something else, but it was still a fun night. This meal was full of things we don’t usually eat, but I think that we all enjoyed the food. We have one more week of Halloween fun; I can’t wait to share our next Halloween movie night (hint: it won’t be a Disney movie).

Sending love and magic.

Happy Haunt Pudding Cups

Published on October 21, 2020October 24, 2020 by Leslie1 Comment

Halloween is getting closer, and I still have so much fun to cram into these next nine days! We have gone back and forth about what we will do on Halloween but have decided that we will have a small get together at our house rather than Trick-Or-Treating. We plan to invite my family over, play games in the backyard, and eat lots of yummy food (I also plan on putting out packaged bags of Halloween Candy for trick-or-treater in case we have any). Today I wanted to share a simple, silly recipe that I plan on making for Halloween “party”, Happy Haunt Pudding Cups.

There are two steps to making this cute pudding cup, first, you will need to make your Mickey Mouse Ghosts. You can make these ghosts in advance and have them ready to go. Once the ghosts are complete, the pudding cups take just minutes to assemble.

Mickey Mouse Ghosts

happy-haunt-1 Download

White Card Stock

Flat Toothpicks

Glue Stick

Open the “happy haunt” PDF above the Mickey Mouse Ghosts and print out this PDF on white card stock. Carefully cut out each ghost. On the back of each ghost, spread some glue with a clue stick, place a flat toothpick, and a small second sheet of scrap paper. Allow the ghosts to dry for an hour.

Now that you have your cute Mickey Ghosts prepared set them aside while you make you get your pudding cups together.

Happy Haunt Pudding Cups

Food Coloring Pen

Milano Cookies

Crushed Oreos (crushed in a food processor or crush in a Ziploc bag)

Pudding Cups

Candy Pumpkins

Mickey Ghosts

Your Milano cookies will be your “tombstones.” I first planned to write on these with icing, but I found this awesome food coloring pen on Amazon and made decorating the cookies easy. You can write whatever you want on each tombstone; I just went with a simple “RIP.”

Remove the lid off of each pudding cup, and top with a scoop of crushed Oreos. Press one Milano cookie “tombstone” into the pudding cup. Add candy pumpkins and Mickey Ghosts to each pudding cup. Enjoy!

I love that you can make these pudding cups for a party, and they can sit out looking cute but won’t ruin. My husband and daughter gobbled these pudding cups up and are excited that I am remaking these cute snacks for Halloween.

Sending love and magic.

Spiderweb Mickey Pretzel Treats

Published on October 13, 2020October 14, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

Here is another quick and easy Halloween recipe for you! This is the perfect recipe to make with little ones and it’s delicious too.

Spiderweb Mickey Pretzel Treats

Waffle Cut Pretzels

Hershey’s Kisses

M&M’s

Mini M&M’s

White Chocolate Bar

Preheat your oven to 250°F. Cover a sheet pan in parchment paper and lay out waffle cut pretzels. Remove wrapper from each Hershey Kiss and place one Hershey Kiss on each pretzel that you have laid out. Place sheet pan in oven and bake for 3-4 minutes (or until Kisses are starting to melt).

Remove sheet pan from oven and top with 1 regular sized M&M and 2 Mini M&M’s in the shape of a Mickey Mouse. Once all pretzels have their M&M’s, place sheet tray in the freezer for 20-30 minutes. Remove pretzels from the freezer. Melt down your white chocolate in the microwave. Using a spoon, drizzle melted white chocolate over each pretzel. Enjoy!

My daughter and I had so much fun making this delicious treat together, and she had so much fun eating them up. I think we will add this to the list of snacks we will make for Halloween night.

Sending love and magic.

Mickey Halloween Chocolate Bark

Published on October 6, 2020October 6, 2020 by Leslie1 Comment

Spooky season is officially here! I don’t know about you, but I love celebrating every holiday with exciting decorations, silly meals, and fun snacks. I am finally starting to decorate and prepare my home for Halloween, and today I wanted to share a cute and easy recipe for Mickey Halloween Chocolate Bark.

Last time I was at Disney World, I grabbed some bags of their Mickey Mouse pretzels and brought them home with me. I didn’t know what to use them for, but I realized they would be perfect for this treat. If you can’t find Mickey Mouse pretzels, have no fear, you can use any type of pretzel for this recipe!

Mickey Halloween Chocolate Bark

2 Baker’s Creamy Milk Chocolate Bars

1 Ghirardelli White Chocolate Bar

Candy Corn

Halloween Sprinkles

Pretzels

Start by breaking the milk chocolate bars into pieces and placing them in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave in 30-second increments, stirring in between. Once the chocolate is completely melted, pour onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper or a silicone baking dish (I used silicone, it made the chocolate removal much easier). Top with candy corn, sprinkles, and pretzels.

Set chocolate in your fridge for 30 minutes. Once the chocolate bark is set, remove from the refrigerator and cut or break into pieces. Melt white chocolate in the microwave in 30-second increments, stirring in between. Once the white chocolate is completely melted, drizzle over cut chocolate bark. Return to the fridge and cool for another 15-20 minutes. Enjoy!

This Mickey Halloween Chocolate Bark is the perfect Halloween treat for everyone! It is silly and yummy and makes me so excited for Halloween. I can’t wait to share even more spooky snacks and meals with you this month, so stay tuned.

Sending love and magic.

Disney Dinner & A Movie Night: Inside Out

Published on September 5, 2020 by Leslie1 Comment

I know that I usually have many cute pictures of my daughter for our movie nights, but full disclosure, the terrible twos are starting in our home, and she has been acting more like Disgust and less like Joy. So with emotions running high, I thought that Inside Out would be the perfect movie to watch this week!

Inside Out is such a cute Pixar Movie about the different emotions we feel over time. It follows Riley, an 11-year-old, as she tries to navigate significant life changes. I truly forgot how much I love this movie and how funny it is. It was the perfect movie for our Disney Dinner & A Movie Night.

Of course, there was only one thing I could make for this meal, and that was broccoli pizza.

As you can imagine, my husband was not excited about the idea of broccoli pizza, but to our shock, it was delicious!

Inside Out Broccoli Pizza

White Sauce

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons garlic powder

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Roasted Broccoli

1 head of broccoli

2 tablespoons olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Pizza

1 cup white sauce

1 cup roasted broccoli

1 ready made pizza crust (I used a frozen ready made pizza crust)

3 slices provolone cheese

1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Prepare White Sauce: Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Once butter is melted, stir in flour and cook for 1-2 minutes. Add garlic powder. Add parmesan cheese and stir until cheese is melted. Add salt and pepper to taste. Set white sauce aside.

Prepare Broccoli: Cut head of broccoli into smaller pieces. Toss broccoli in olive oil, salt and pepper and roast in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. Set broccoli aside.

Prepare Pizza: Spread an even layer of white sauce on your pizza crust. Space out and place your three pieces of provolone cheese. Sprinkle half of your mozzarella cheese over the pizza. Add broccoli. Sprinkle parmesan cheese and remaining mozzarella on top. Bake pizza in a preheated 425 degree oven for 8 minutes or until cheese is bubbly. Enjoy!

We all agreed that the broccoli pizza was super yummy and had the same flavors of broccoli cheese soup. It is something I would definitely make again in the future! As a side, we had a “Mixed Emotions” Fruit Salad made of blueberries, purple grapes, green grapes, and maraschino cherries. This fruit salad was my daughter’s favorite part of the meal.

For dessert, we had “Core Memory” Cake Balls. I made these using Funfetti Cake Mix, vanilla frosting, and Candy Melts to make these cute cake balls. We gobbled them all up before the night was over.

My favorite part of the night was watching my daughter enjoy the movie so much! She has been indifferent about most Classic Disney Movies but really seems to love Pixar movies. We might have to watch another Pixar movie next week.

Sending love and magic.

Recipe: No Way Jose Sundae from Beaches & Cream

Published on July 13, 2020 by LeslieLeave a comment

Nestled between Disney’s Beach Club and Yacht Club Resorts you will find a hidden gem called Beaches & Cream Soda Shop. If you have never heard of this place it is the cutest little diner with some of the best “All-American” food and ice cream. If you have heard of this place, it’s probably because of the Kitchen Sink Ice Cream Challenge.

While The Kitchen Sink is over the top and amazing, one of my favorite sundaes you can get at Beaches & Cream is the No Way Jose. This sundae is full of hot fudge, peanut butter, and deliciousness (and calories, if we’re being honest). A few weeks ago, we remade this sundae at home and I wanted to share the recipe with you.

To make this recipe, you will need:

1 cup of peanut butter

1/2 cup of hot fudge

3 scoops chocolate ice cream

3 scoops vanilla ice cream

2 tablespoons chocolate chips

2 tablespoons peanut butter chips

whipped cream

cherry

Use microwave or double boiler to heat peanut butter. Heat hot fudge sauce. Put a couple spoonfuls of warm peanut butter and warm hot fudge in the bottom of your bowl. Add scoops of vanilla and chocolate ice cream. Top ice cream with more peanut butter and hot fudge. Add whipped cream. Don’t forget the cherry on top.

I hope you love this recipe as much as I do. If you make this sundae for yourself, leave a comment below and let me know how you liked it!

Sending love and magic.