Cranberry Orange Muffins

 

Adapted from Cookie and Kate

1/3 cup of oil - I used 2 TB of olive oil and a generous 3 TB of applesauce

3/4 cup of honey - I used a generous 1/3 cup of turbinado sugar and 1/4 cup of honey 

2 eggs - I used 2 for 1.5x the recipe. 1 would be fine

1 cup of plain Greek yogurt

2 tsp of vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp of baking soda

1 tsp of baking powder

1 cup of whole wheat flour

1 cup of all purpose flour

2 cups of chopped cranberries (12 oz bag yielded almost 4 cups of chopped cranberries)

1 TB orange zest (about 1 medium orange)

Additional turbinado sugar to sprinkle on top of the muffins before baking.

Bake at 400 degrees for 15-17 minutes. The sugar got a little brown for me, I might try a cooler oven.

We loved this new recipe and will try it again.

Weighted Lap Pad

One of my students seemed like he would benefit from a weighted lap pad. I knew I had all the materials to make one and went ahead.

First I cut two different materials at 12"x16". I chose soft materials. One has bumps and the other is very soft.

I sewed the two pieces right sides together. Starting on the corner of the long side and sewed along three sides plus around the final corners.

Next step is to flip it to right sides out and top stitch around the three sides and the little bit around each corner.

Next I marked the half and each quarter. Here is where I sewed channels for the plastic beads. After sewing the channels, I added 1/2 as many beads as I wanted for each channel. I wanted the lap pad to be 2 pounds so I put 2 ounces in the bottom sections of all four channels.

Because I wanted to sew down the middle, it's easier to do that with only half the poly beads inside. I added pins to keep the beads away from my center line and then sewed across.

Afterwards I could add 2 more ounces to each channel and then sew the top edge down. I fold in each edge before I sewed the channels which made it easy to continue to keep the edge folded down to topstich across.

The finished product is fairly small and soft. This is for a 1st grade student.