What’s better than hot chocolate? Trippple Hot Chocolate! Three types of chocolate make this drink triply delicious!

What you need:
1 cup of milk, cocoa powder, square of milk chocolate, square of dark chocolate or square of white chocolate, sugar, pot, spoon, adult assistant, stove, mug

What you do:
1. Put your milk into the pot. Set the element to low-medium heat.
2. Add 1 tablespoon of cocoa, 1 tablespoon of white sugar, 1 square of milk chocolate and 1 square of dark chocolate (if you don’t like dark chocolate, you can use white chocolate instead for a different flavor).
3. Stir the milk until the sugar and cocoa is dissolved, and the chocolate is melted.
4. Pour the hot chocolate into a mug. Sip it and enjoy!
5. For extra decadence, add some whipped cream on top!

Sprinkles the MAZIN' Hamster has arrived and there’s no better way to celebrate than with a batch of delicious (and adorable!) sprinkled cupcakes! Here’s what you need to make a tray of your own:

What you need:
½ cup of softened unsalted butter, vanilla extract, three cups of icing sugar, bowl, hot water, hand mixer, adult assistant, rainbow sprinkles

What you do:
1. With the assistance of your adult assistant, make a batch of your favorite vanilla cupcakes. Let them cool.
2. Having your adult assistant help, get ready to make some icing!
3. Put the butter into the bowl. Mix it with the mixer until it’s creamy. Add one teaspoon of vanilla extract. Mix well.
4. Start adding the icing sugar gradually. Mix it in thoroughly after each addition. If you find the icing is getting too stiff, add a little bit of hot water and mix thoroughly.
5. When your icing is lovely and creamy, put it into a plastic baggie and snip a pencil-sized hole at one corner of the baggie. This is your icing bag.
6. Frost the cupcakes.
7. Top the icing with rainbow sprinkles.
8. Share your cupcakes with a friend (maybe even Sprinkles the MAZIN’ Hamster?!)!

Types of sprinkles:
There are lots of different types of sprinkles. Here’s a little breakdown of the kinds you might find at your local bake shop:
Sprinkles: These are your regular, everyday sprinkles. Usually they just taste sweet, although sometimes they have flavoring.
Shaped Sprinkles: These are sometimes called ‘quins’ or ‘sequins’. They don’t taste like much (other than sugar), but they’re definitely fun and cute!
Sugar sprinkles: These are crunchy and tasty and they come in a rainbow of color!
Chocolate sprinkles: Yum! These brown sprinkles taste a little bit like chocolate!
Nonpareils: These are little round balls of sugar – they come in every color you can imagine!
Dragees (pronounced ‘dra-jays’): You’ve probably seen these little decorative balls on lots of fancy foods. Dragees come in many different shapes and sizes. Even though the silver and gold balls don’t look edible, they are!

Did you know?
Some people call sprinkles ‘jimmies’ or ‘hundreds and thousands’!

What you do:
1. Roll out your shortbread and cut out rectangles, about the size of dominoes.
2. Bake the cookies. Have your adult assistant remove them from the oven. Let the cookies cool fully.

3. Put your chocolate chips into a microwave safe bowl. Have your grown up melt the chocolate chips in the microwave.
4. Using the toothpick, draw a line in melted chocolate across the middle of the cookie, dividing it in two halves.
5. Using the toothpick, draw dots on either side of the line.
6. Let the chocolate dry.
7. Package the cookies and give them to friends.

What you need:
Your favorite gingerbread cookie dough
Butter knife
Spatula
Icing bag
Icing bag tip
Meringue powder
Water
About 3 cups of powdered sugar
Royal icing (recipe below)
Cookie sheet
Electric mixer

What you do:
1. Make your favorite gingerbread dough.

2. Roll out the dough.

3. Using your butter knife, cut out paw print shapes. Put the paw prints onto the cookie sheet with the spatula.
4. Bake the cookies. Have your adult assistant remove them from the oven and wait until they’re cool before icing them.
5. Make the royal icing. To make the royal icing, you’ll need to put 3 tablespoons of meringue powder and 6 tablespoons of warm water in a bowl. Mix until the mixture is frothy and thicker.
6. Gradually add the powdered sugar to the mixture. When the mixture is thick enough to pipe, put it into the icing bag.
7. Pipe an outline around each cat paw print cookie. If you have colored sprinkles, sprinkle some on while the icing is still wet.

8. When the icing is dry, you can package the cookies and give them to friends!

What you need:
Half a package of plain cream cheese
1 tablespoon of softened butter
1 ½ cups of powdered sugar
½ capful of peppermint extract
Hand mixer
Adult assistant
Cookie sheet or large plate
Waxed paper
Food coloring (optional)

What you do:
1. Put the cream cheese and butter into a bowl.
2. Mix the cream cheese and butter really well (you can get your adult assistant to do this for you).
3. Gradually add the 1 ½ cups of powdered sugar.
4. Mix until well blended.

5. Add the peppermint extract.
6. Mix again. At this point, you can choose whether or not to add food coloring. If you do, mix it in now.

7. Put your waxed paper on the plate or cookie sheet.
8. Roll balls of the mixture and put them onto the waxed paper. If you find the mixture too sticky, mix in a little more powdered sugar. You want the mixture to feel like stiff cookie dough.
9. Put the peppermint balls into the fridge.
10. When the peppermint balls are slightly chilled, take them out and form them into heart shapes. Just pinch the bottom and indent the top.

11. Put the peppermint hearts back into the fridge. You can coat them with chocolate when they’re fully chilled, or just eat them as they are! Yum!