Celebrating July 4th

Since Darrin was at Scout Camp all week, we hung out with another family who's dad was there, too. We sailed loud rocket balloons in the sky (safe fireworks for us moms) and tried sparklers, but the rain put a damper on them. We ate "crabby patties" (their kids are huge SpongeBob fans) which were just hamburgers and hot dogs. I brought the desserts, which I've attached pictures in case you want ideas for next year.

This is a firecracker cake, composed of a store-bought angel food cake (I didn't want to spend my whole holiday baking!), surrounded by sliced strawberries, which Haylee hulled. Then Preston assisted with dusting the top with powdered sugar to have the most "white" appearance possible, then shaking on the red colored sugar. Meanwhile, Hannah had been hard at work cutting the ends of Twizzlers to spread open like fireworks. (about 4 inches) It also works well to buy the pull-n-peel kind, but we prefer the regular kind to eat. I used two twist ties to hold the "fireworks" in a bunch and filled in the center hole with blueberries to keep them upright.

The other dessert was Forever Stars Jello. The kids thought this was fun to eat. 2 boxes of strawberry jello went in the bottom of a 9x13, gently adding fruit during the gelling process. Then 1 box of berry blue jello went into ice cube trays shaped as stars. I treated them with cooking spray before filling, but it was still very tricky to get them loose and intact. I used a cake tester to "cut" the jello stars away from the sides. Maybe I should have soaked the trays in hot water to loosen them?? If anyone knows how to make jello molds release easier, let me know.