Last year, on Valentine’s Day morning, the girls asked about a Valentine’s Day surprise. I had planned to gift them their chocolate after school and hadn’t thought beyond that so I quickly offered to have the girls exchange their valentine’s with each other and put them on the table… and then the mom guilt hit at not having had anything planned and so I looked around the kitchen to try to figure out something special I could quickly whip up before school. This is what I came up with.
Preparations
I quickly looked through my kitchen to see what I had to work with and found some frozen homemade waffles and leftover cream cheese. I realized I could use my kitchen scissors to cut the waffles into a heart shape, dye my cream cheese pink, and let the kids decorate the heart shaped waffles themselves. With that plan in place I quickly grabbed the waffles, tried to cut them, failed, and tossed them in the toaster oven to heat up first.
At this time I had several blocks of cream cheese that needed to be used up so, earlier this week, I had opened one and put it in a leftover cleaned out Bonne Maman jam jar so the girls Ould spread it on their toast. As such I was able to grab the jar of cream cheese, remove the metal lid, and toss the bottom into the microwave to warm it up. I had chosen to warm up the cream cheese so it would be easier to mix in the dye to turn pink and, especially, for the girls to spread and ideally decorate the waffles quicker. I used just a couple drops of food dye before mixing it up and loved the final color.
While the cream cheese was warming up, before dying, and the waffles were toasting I grabbed my sprinkles and two small cups (leftover from medicine) and started pouring out some of my Valentine’s themed sprinkles so the kids could decorate the heart waffles. I ended up going with some XOs from years ago, unicorn sugar sprinkles from Ada’s last birthday, and some heart sprinkles leftover from a cookie decorating kit that very year (leftover as I had supplemented with other sprinkles). Previous years I simple sprinkled the sprinkles directly onto the edge-ish of their plate but I figured this year they had full control over where they ended up.
Once the waffles were heated, after making the cream cheese and laying out the sprinkles, I turned the square waffles into hearts by choosing a single corner to be the heart tip and trimming the remaining bits off to have the angled edges and dipped center. I then repeated this three more times making four hearts in all. In case the kids were still hungry and as I was trying to be quick I just left the leftover waffles bits on the plate so they could ice those pieces if needed too.
As a quick aside this is a perfect use of those not quite square waffles that come out of the waffle iron when you don’t add enough mix… since they have less to cut away.
And with that the Valentine’s Day themed breakfast was ready for the girls!
Breakfast
After selecting the sprinkles, dying the cream cheese, and shaping the waffles breakfast was ready and waiting for the girls. They absolutely loved it and couldn’t wait to decorate, sprinkle, and eat them.
The girls loved their breakfast feast and I’m super glad I came up with it at the last minute…. and had waffles in my freezer.
If your kids are more pancake people I could see making dyed oven pancakes, if you have time, and then using a cookie cutter to shape them. I haven’t done this for Valentine’s Day yet but years ago I premade dyed green oven pancakes and, once cooled, I used a heart shaped cookie cutter to make shamrocks. I tossed them, prepped, into a container in the fridge so the morning of I just needed to plate and microwave them for a quick and simple breakfast. I just realized I’ve only done this once and I guess could surprise the kids again… anyway if you’re interested you can check it out here.
Did you make these for Valentine’s Day? Do you prefer waffles or pancakes? If you did something else I’d love to hear about it! Maybe I could do the same in the future too. Whatever you did or plan to do I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. And I hope you have a good Valentine’s Day!
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Breakfast Children Food Dye Preschooler Sensory Activity Toddler Valentines Day
