Snail Fail (And Redemption)

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Busted Button

Last week I made a dairy-free version of Buttercream Couture’s delicious caramel candy, and I had great success!

But when I got ahead of myself and attempted to create a cheater-version of her impressive chocolate-dipped marshmallow caramel escargot, I had what I like to call a ‘snail fail’. Big time:

If only I had followed her instructions the FIRST time, this wouldn’t have happened. (But it was worth it for the pic right?)

Anyways, like I promised, I gave it another shot!! Don’t be intimidated by the fact that you need to make your own homemade marshmallow for this recipe- it is SOOOO easy!!

I’ve only ever used Martha Stewart’s recipe but Melissa’s tutorial is a lot more clear (and entertaining!) than Ms. S’s is.

The first time I made my own marshmallows was a couple of years ago when a friend’s kiddo was having a Birthday party at a campsite. He loved firetrucks and campfires, so I thought the perfect present would be some marshmallow firetrucks to roast over the fire! Check out these cute marshmallows:


Pardon the horrible photo that was taken with a laptop webcam. I am so happy I finally own a camera!

SO! I got to work on my second attempt at caramel escargot.

I followed her directions EXACTLY… I even did this:

I’m good at following rules when I want to, which is rare.

My 4 year old son, Spiderman, even got in on the snaily action!

They were gross-tasting but super cute anyways.

Oh good, he color-coded them:

Well, enough stalling, are you ready to see my finished product?!?!

Here is the beginning of my delectable army of mollusks:


I’d say that would be a snail success!

I can’t believe how many snails this made! Here is just 1/4 of the ones I did (and I halved the recipe!)

But the REAL question is: Do babies like them?

Actually, that’s the dumbest question ever, but I just want an excuse to show off a pic of my toddler eating one:

“Tastes nothing like the usual garden snails I enjoy on my morning walks!”


Baby-approved.

Thanks again to Buttercream Couture for her amazing tutorial and all her other inspiring ideas! She makes impressive sweets attainable to even non-bakers like me! She takes out all the pretentious language and isn’t trying to make herself feel important by sounding fancy shmancy.

Well, I have a few kiddos I need to stop neglecting, so I should escar go.

Have fun arming your own mollusk military!

~Dot

Posted in Dairy-Free recipes, Recipes | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Winter Wonderland (Painting With Evergreens)

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Busted Button

The other day I saw a pretty nifty idea on Pinterest that involved using an evergreen twig to stamp ‘snowflakes’ onto wrapping paper. Here is the original post about that, but I thought I’d use that technique in the background of a winter-themed painting! AND furthermooorrrre, I think I will be giving this painting away to one of my lucky Facebook Fans!!! So, if you haven’t already, make sure you like my FB page here.

Cute lookin huh? Let me show ya how easy this is- I’ll walk you thru my whole painting too- It’s a different kind of background and it is super-simple!

Ahhhh, a blank canvas 🙂 I love! This one happens to be a 16×20″ number.


I started with a mix of white and blue, and painted looong strokes over the top half of the canvas. Just keep adding color, or taking it away with more white, and blend it until you wind up with something you like to look at.

I like looking at this.

Next, mix together a darker variety of colors, which will match your sky or whatever theme you are working on. I started with silvery-grey…

But it was gross-looking. So when it was still wet, I quickly added some purple into the equation:

I started painting 3 different hills in 3 different shades. It’s easiest to start with the back hill and finish with the front hill.

Now, you have to wait for the paint to dry… which is like watching paint dry.

Occupy yourself with a midnight pregnancy craving of brussels sprouts.

All those brussels sprouts left me feeling a lil sparkly (?), so I busted out the sparkle paint.

I started to swirl that happiness in the sky, like little wisps of wintery air! Oh golly, I’m sounding like Bob Ross!

After a few more wisps, I was ready to go hunting outside for the tool I was going to be using in the next step of this painting!


I was prepared! I had my scissors, slippers, and my plasma cutter, which doubles as a flash light.

My hunting trip was very successful!! Who knew that plasma cutter would come in so handy?

Now, on to the snow flakes! I mixed some white paint on my sparkle-laden plate with some thick gel medium. I wanted these to have some texture, but you could definitely just use plain old white paint.

I found a perfect lil twig to use as my ‘stamp’, and I dipped it thoroughly into the paint. I practiced on a scrap piece of paper to make sure I got a nice- looking snowflake. This twig standing in the paint reminded me of Christmas 🙂

So I did this.

And then I got back to my painting.


I wanted a variety of different sized snowflakes, so I trimmed a couple more twigs to get that result.

Well, I was going for ‘winter wonderland’ and I think I got it! But it definitely needed a tree!

For a detailed tutorial and tips on how I paint my trees, check out my blending tutorial here.

I know trees are nekked in the winter, but that couldn’t stop me from adding some buttons!

That’s a lot of white buttons. Does this picture make anyone else extremely excited? I hope you’ve seen the rest of my button collection… it is a thing of beauty!!!

These white buttons were pretty good, but they needed a bit of help from their friends…

So I dug up a few light purple and blue buttons- and I even dipped into my antique collection to find some pretty metal and glass buttons that would suit this painting perfectly!


So lovely! Notice that a lot of the metal buttons have a nub on the end rather than holes- there is a specific technique I used to affix them to the canvas- and you can see that (along with a bunch of really cool vintage buttons) here. 

Finally, my painting was complete!

I know I said I would give this painting away, but It looks so good in my bathroom!!! Okay, fine, I’ll make myself another one. I love how the sparkles sparkle and the snowflakes snow! This painting got me really excited for winter and the Christmas season! I have so many great tutorials and ideas up my sleeves for December!!!

I’m getting ahead of myself…

Well, happy Monday, people! Try to turn something a lil snowier with this fun idea!!

Happy snowflake-stamping!

~Dot

Posted in Button Art, Painting Tutorials | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Dairy-Free Caramels

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Busted Button

So my pal Melissa, from Buttercream Couture just finished up and amazing 6-week series all about CARAMEL. The recipes range from suuuuper simple to fancy shmancy- but she explains it all in such a way that even a new candy-maker should have luck! Sweet, tasty luck.

After reading her post on caramel candies I was craving them madly for over a week. But, since me and dairy have been in a lover’s spat for the past 3 years (a spat that doesn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon- heck, I’ll be honest, I got served divorce papers from that stupid cow… heh… Get it?) I thought these candies would be out of my reach! So in an attempt to satisfy my craving, I made her dairy-free version of caramel sauce (which is tested and true) and I stuck it in the freezer hoping that it would emulate the candies. Well, it was darn freaking delicious, but it wasn’t caramel candy 😦

I finally decided that I would devote an hour to at least attempting a dairy-free version. Heck, even if it didn’t turn out, I was sure I’d wind up with something worthy to be eaten with a spoon from the pot, right?!

Now, usually I am super gung-ho to convert anything into a delicious allergy-sensitive alternative, but I was intimidated because this involved candy. And fat. Sugar, and candy thermometers- Alchemy! I thought it would be pointless to mess around-especially because the amount of dairy in the original recipe is… huge. And, sure, that translates into a whole lotta delish- but It’s a lot easier to make something dairy-free if there isn’t much…dairy in it. Go figure.

Well, I got to it and I was sooooo pleasantly surprised when my attempt worked!!!!!

I made a whole lotta caramel!!!! And apart from having a bit of a coconutty flavor (YUM!), it was really comparable to the creamy, buttery caramel candies I had missed! The only things I changed from her awesome recipe was that I swapped the butter for vegan margarine, and the 2 different milks for canned coconut milk!

As you can see they turned out pretty great. You HAVE to check out her post to see more details on all the great things you can do with this versatile recipe! One of the things she made was a lil something she called ‘tortoises’ hehehe- ya know, caramel, pecans and chocolate? Apparently people can get pretty technical about these things… something like if the caramel is on the bottom then technically it’s called a ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’- not a ‘Turtle’. I think ‘Tortoise’ was pretty good.

Anyways these things looked so amazing I knew I had to make some! Unfortunately, my baking shelf in my pantry was filled with things like water chestnuts, squid in ink sauce, and mostly cobwebs. So I had to get inventive. Since we have a fire pit in our new back yard, we have a steady supply of smore ingredients going on. So I placed pieces of graham cracker on top of little rounds of greased parchment paper in a muffin tin. Then I ripped a marshmallow in half and squished that on top of the crackers. I got this alll prepped before I started my caramel cooking process, so I could be ready to dump a couple tablespoons of the just-done super-hot goodness over the marshmallows. After the caramel set, I poured a tablespoon of melted, dairy-free semi-sweet chocolate over top, and in the end…. I created….

Deliciousness.

I’d like to introduce you to…

The Sweet Smorgia Brown. Heh heh heh heh heh. Hehehehehehehe. I can’t tell if that name is genius, or just a really bad mom-ism.

Now I have to share with you the most impressive caramel-creation that Melissa created. Here is an awesome photo (taken by the amazing Frances Eden) of her delicious chocolate-dipped caramel marshmallow escargot:

Impressive hey?? I have never seen anything like this. And since I had a bit of caramel candy left, I thought I’d give these a try…

Perfect.

No. Not at all.

Of course, I didn’t follow her instructions AT ALL, but I promise you, I am going to make these escargot the PROPER way. And I’m gonna make em pretty!

Well thanks, Melissa, for letting me experiment with your recipes! They really are irresistible and easy to do (if you don’t get all “independent woman” like I did with that snail!)

*UPDATE* check out my 2nd Snail attempt here. 😉

So don’t forget to check out her whole caramel series HERE! You wont regret it 😉

OH! I almost forgot to share my exciting news! My Etsy shop is finally up and running! Take a look-see here. Go shopping, or at least be entertained by some of the funny descriptions 😉

I just put my first order in the mail! So exciting!!!

Well, happy mail-mailing and snail-trailing!

~Dot

Okay fine, let’s see that snail fail one more time:

Posted in Dairy-Free recipes, Dessert, Halloween, Recipes, Snacktivities, vegetarian/vegan recipes | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments