Summer Flower Pots

For these edible flower pots, I took an idea from "Dirt Cake" to use up some crumbled cookies from a birthday cake I had made kind of recently.  (I made this one, again.  So I had crumbled up oreos, Filipino cookies, and chocolate grahams.)  I made my favorite homemade, easy chocolate pudding, set it in these cute little silicone baking cups (that looks like pots), and sprinkled the "dirt" on top.  Then I set them in the fridge for the pudding to firm up a bit. 

The little "seeds" on top are All-Natural Chocolate-Covered Sunflower seeds, from Nuts.com (LOVE Nuts.com!!!!  They have everything and ship so fast!  The food coloring in these comes from veggie juices, no fake food coloring here).  And the tulips and leaves are just gum drops (not all natural, lol!) smashed flat with the bottom of a drinking glass, with notches cut out of the top for the tulips, and the leaves are just a flat one cut in half.  You put the tulip together on a toothpick, and when the pudding has firmed up some (a few hours), you can stick the flower in. 

The kids loved these!!!  I admit they tasted pretty good to me, too.

Flower Pots

by What a Dish!

Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding:

1/2 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups milk (skim or 1% milk will work)
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Other ingredients:

chocolate-covered sunflower seeds

colored gum drops (sugar-coated)

toothpicks, preferably green ones

1.  Make the pudding:

In a saucepan, stir together sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt. Place over medium heat, and stir in milk. Bring to a boil, and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat, and stir in butter and vanilla.  Immediately pour warm pudding into the "flower pots".  Refrigerate.

2. Make the dirt:

Process cookies of your choice... a mix of dark and light colors (Oreos, choc-covered ones, etc) in the food processor until crumbled up and looking like dirt.  Carefully make a layer of dirt on top of the pudding in each pot. 

3.  Make the tulips:

Flatten gumdrops as flat as possible with the bottom of a drinking glass.  Cut out two small V-shaped notches in the top of each one to resemble a tulip.  Flatten green gum drops, and cut each in half.  Each half will be the leaf for one tulip.  Thread the leaves through a toothpick and stick the flower on top of each toothpick.

4.  When the pudding has been in the fridge for a few hours, add a few chocolate-covered sunflower seeds to each pot.  Stick a flower in each one, and serve!



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