Caking it!
I generally love cooking, at least no one complains too much when I cook. That said, I'm learning things all the time, and I'm not really a chef... more of a home cook who doesn't manage to poison the family. I do stay away from making sweets and baking things though, the desserts and stuff like that tends to require some serious recipe following and definitely not too much in the "winging it" department. I'm not so great at having the patience to follow a recipe with exact measurements... and so, many of my attempts at baking have turned into interesting examples of why you really should follow the recipe! So, my wife tends to do the desserts....
My wife recently had a birthday during the Corona-isolation time which meant that our usual celebration of going to a fancy sort of restaurant was completely out of the question (speaking of which, I do wonder how many restaurants are going to survive this lockdown). This meant that we (my two kids and I) were going to have to learn how to make a birthday cake! Luckily, my older child has a cookbook of simple recipes for primary school age kids... so, this could be something that I could help them do!
Now, I'm not going to list the recipe, as it is a simple cake... and more to the point, it is the recipe from a published book. Thus, it isn't something that I can really take credit for. This post is more about the experience of making a cake with my kids rather than a recipe blog....
Let me say... it is really handy to have helpers around. It does slow down the process a bit, but it does mean that you get to delegate pretty much all the tasks out! Due to the age difference between the two kids, I have to be a bit more inventive in how to keep both of them occupied at the same time! I never liked greasing cake trays... you hands get really oily! Yuck! Luckily, the kids love doing it... although, I had to redo the toddler's one... that had more butter on the outside than the inside!
Something that my wife has learnt and told me... is that it is really important that the butter is really at room temperature and not straight out of the fridge. I guess this has something to do with the way it lumps with the sugar when you mix it up... or maybe it is something more interestingly subtle... I should read something about that. Anyway, I made sure to have the butter out long in advance, which is a better solution than my wife asking if she could put the butter to soften up a bit on MY GAMING RIG!
Measuring out the various parts of flour and smashing open the eggs was definitely a job for the older girl... however, the slow tipping of the various ingredients into the mixing bowl whilst the the beaters were going was going to be the domain of the 3 year old. Fine division of labour I think... as long as no one got their fingers stuck anywhere that they shouldn't!
Speaking of which... about half way through the beating with the electric mixer... my oldest girl said, mum never lets me use this! OOOOPS! On the other hand, Mum never lets her use any of the power tools either... and I'm pretty careful with them as well, I don't just let her use them for anything! Plus, I'm always keeping a close eye!
Hmmmm... is it supposed to look as messy as this? Will this work? I had thought that we would have had enough for three trays... but in the end, it was only the two. So, there go my plans for a triple decker cake! After seeing what goes into the cake batter... I'm not really keen to have the kids lick it all up... RAW EGG! Still... I let them... after all, it is what MUM lets them do!
Hey... I'm pretty chuffed! These actually look like proper cakes after coming out of the oven. I did poke them with a cake tester to see if they were properly cooked through... and I took the opportunity to have a number of DAD JOKE moments. I poked the kids with the tester... and told them that they DEFINITELY weren't cakes! Haha... get it?
After letting my oldest do the electric mixer on the cake mix... I thought it was a good idea to let her do the cream as well. Nope... bad idea! We ended up with cream EVERYWHERE!
So, Cream and a crazy amount of Strawberry Jam for the insides. This is going to be a crazily sweet cake here! If only I could stop the little one pilfering all the cream whilst I was trying to do the cake... she is a bit of a sneaky monkey!
The oldest one did the decorating... I have no eye for that sort of thing, so that was going to be for the best! Fresh Strawberries, Powdered Sugar and a generous slather of cream to finish it all off!
In the end, I'm quite surprised that it turned out at all... not a disaster... but I'm not particularly keen to try my hand at anything more complicated!
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