Celebrating the Feast of the Archangels

Today is the Feast of the Archangels, or Michaelmas as it is also called, as it used to be only St. Michael who was honored on this day. The Church calendar now celebrates all the archangels on this date. The girls helped me make an angel food cake yesterday (well, they mostly watched... separating 12 eggs is not exactly kid-friendly work!), and today, we whipped some cream (using agave nectar - I love that stuff!) and assembled a trifle.

Legend says that when St. Michael kicked the devil out of heaven, he fell into a prickly blackberry bush and then cursed the blackberries, so it is traditional to eat the last of the season's blackberries on this day... before they become cursed by the devil. I happened to see fresh blackberries at Sam's, so I got a package and then had to decide what to do with them for this feast day! I had seen the suggestion of making an angel food cake trifle for an angel-themed dessert, and thought I'd just use the blackberries. So, we have the angel part covered with the cake, the whipped cream looks like clouds (evoking thoughts of heaven and angels), and the blackberry folklore - all in one recipe!! I took the agave whipped cream recipe and the whole wheat angel food cake recipes from two different places and then threw them together with the blackberries. It was yummy!!

I don't have a trifle bowl (yes, there is actually such thing as a container specified for trifles!), so i used the biggest semi-clear bowl we have. Caroline and Cecilia's biggest contribution was tearing up the angel food cake (which had gotten stuck and torn partway in half already) and putting it into the bowl... and licking the beaters after I whipped the cream, of course! Caroline liked sprinkling the berries in, while Cecilia just fussed that she couldn't eat all of them.

I cannot remember now where i found this pattern, but we used it to make archangel puppets. I traced the outline onto white cardstock and let Caroline decorate it however she wanted. Then I cut out the angel part while she cut out the wings - she is getting to be really steady with the scissors! She named her archangel Michael.

He is a very colorful archangel! :)

I figured Cecilia would want to get in on the coloring action, so I made one for her as well. I colored part of it and she colored the rest. Caroline named it Gabriel, and said that next year we'd have to make a Raphael.

Here are their angels "flying." Caroline wanted to take them outside in the afternoon to run and swing with them in the wonderful fall breeze that we had today! We spent a lot of time outside today on our first day that has really felt like autumn!