Strawberry Yogurt Muffins

One word…. YUM!!!!  And I’m not usually that big of a fan of my own cooking, but wow are these delicious! I kinda merged a few recipes and played around with some ingredients trying to make these more toddler friendly… aka… less sugar!  And while I couldn’t get rid of all the sugar, I think this recipe isn’t completely unhealthy!  Besides, Charlie loves them…

You can make these with or without those muffin paper cups, if without then you just need to grease the muffin tin.

Ingredients:
1 ½ C flour
¾ tsp baking powder
¾ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp salt
½ tsp ginger
⅓ C butter
⅔ C sugar
1 egg
½ tsp vanilla
1 C vanilla yogurt
1 C finely chopped strawberries, larger chunks for bigger kids

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and ground ginger.

With a hand mixer, beat butter and sugar until fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes. Add egg, beating well. Beat in vanilla extract.

On a low speed, beat in the flour mixture alternately with the yogurt, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Do not over mix. Stir in sliced strawberries.

Coat muffin tin with cooking spray or put in the paper cups. Fill each cup two-thirds full with batter.

Bake until the muffins are golden brown, 15 to 18 minutes, rotating the pan around the oven throughout the cooking process to ensure even cooking. Also, the toothpick trick applies… insert toothpick, if it comes out clean their done!

Cool in the pan for 15 minutes. Remove the muffins from the pans and cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes 12 muffins

**Serving tip… perfect for breakfast or a snack, easy to chop up into smaller pieces too!

Messy Scale ~~~> 1, so clean! I’m sure these might leave some crumbs, but I didn’t see any!
(1 = clean baby! 10 = directly dump child into the bathtub after eating)

Treat Hunting

What do you do after your toddler goes to bed for the night?  Treat hunt!!

I feel like since Charlie came around we have kind of cut back on spoiling Mic… so we make up for it by playing games with him every night.  Our favorite game, treat hunting! This game is perfect for nighttime because it using Mic’s doggie instincts to hunt, which means he’s to busy to bark! So its definitely not a hyper game.  Also, it’s a great game to play after a long day of chasing a (just learned to run) toddler around.

During the day I collect whatever doggy safe table scraps I can and put them in one of Charlie’s baby tupperware bowls with a lid, keep it in the fridge. If we don’t have anything doggy safe, I keep hot dogs in the freezer at all times… so I’ll just boil one up and cut it into little pieces. I don’t like to use store bought treats for this game because you go through quite a lot of treats, so something inexpensive that you can cut up works best.  And Mic loves hot dogs!!

This game is also great for training. Start out by picking a “place” for your dog. Mic’s is his doggy bed in the living room… this “place” is also great to use when people come over, your eating dinner, etc… Tell your dog “Mic, go to your place”! Once they are in their place, waiting patiently for your next command, start hiding the treats. Our set up is perfect because while Mic is in his place we hide treats in the other room, then while he’s treat hunting we finish hiding the treats in the living room!  This way he never sees where we are hiding the treats.  One tip… remember where you hide all the treats just in case your doggy misses one!  Once your done hiding your treats, give your dog their release command… ours is “OK, treat hunt”!

After the first treat hunt he knew exactly what to do. Now when he hears the phrase treat hunt he starts hunting around! This game actually wears him out and its so much fun to sit back with my feet up and watch him hunt around the house. Everybody wins!