Bless Your Heart, Beau

I hopped out of bed bright and early this morning to put together a special Groundhog Day breakfast treat for the littles.  They were beyond excited to find hugs and kisses homemade waffles (in spite of what bestie S may believe, Bisquick IS totally homemade) and Groundhog hot cocoa when they ravenously raced down the stairs for breakfast.

Now, while the PCP might have been slightly more excited when he thought these were tic-tac-toe waffles than after my crash course hugs and kisses, he was thrilled nonetheless.  Such a cute way to make a festive breakfast and, never fear, it works just as beautifully on frozen waffles.

Waffles aside, the Groundhog hot cocoa just stole the show.  Cookie’s delighted squeal was enough to make me want to recreate these little goodies over and over again.  This darling idea came from Gourmet Mom on the Go, but I honestly didn’t even read her instructions (click on over to her site if you want a step by step.)  For my version, I purchased fudge covered oreos (which are delish, by the way), piped on the eyeballs with ready-made white and black icing tubes from the Pub and made do with some halved pecan halves for the ears. I melted a handful of chocolate chips in the micro and used that to stick on the ears, to adhere the finished head to the inside of the tea cup and finally to ice the little shadow onto the saucer.  I stuck the finished product in the fridge to harden up before pouring in the hot cocoa and topping with a generous dollop of whipped cream.  Easy, festive and completely adorable!

In this household, we exclusively subscribe to the psychic prophecies of our very own hometown groundhog, General Beau Lee, who boasts honorary doctorates (which really says something about the University of Georgia), various other distinctions, and most importantly a 94% accuracy rate (that designer imposter, strangely named “Punxsutawhatever” rodent up North manages barely 85%.)  As soon as we finished up breakfast, we hopped on the internet for the big reveal.  And, we were ever so delighted (and highly relieved) to learn that Beau did NOT see his shadow this morning, thus predicting the impending end of winter.

Bless your heart, Beau.  Spring is nearly here!