Baking with a 3 year old

Created from a combination of cooking experiences with my 3 year old!

1. Get 3 year old exciting about cooking
2. Get out cookbooks to look up recipes
3. Find a recipe for biscuits
4. Go to get ingredients ready
5. Realise you don’t have right ingredients/enough quantity
6. (at this point, you could go ahead and make biscuits but to a fewer quantity than recipe adjusting the ingredients but, in my experience, this never works! I’ve tried several times)
7. Look up a new recipe.
8. 7 recipes later…child is looking bored and losing interest in baking
9. Find a cake recipe
10. Get ingredients ready
11. Give 3 year old eggs to break in bowl
12. Me: “A little harder…a little harder….NOT THAT HARD”
13. Fish out bits of egg shell and clear up egg from worktop
14. Say calmly to 3 year old “No don’t eat the egg, you mustn’t put your fingers in it”
15. Weigh out caster sugar
16. Me: “Stop putting your fingers in the egg”
17. Add sugar to egg
18. A little less calm “stop putting your fingers in, stop trying to eat it!”
19. Turn on mixer, 3 year old insists on holding it and turns it up to full power
20. Wipe egg & sugar mix off your face, 3 year old’s face, work surfaces and walls
21. Try the mixing again ensuring 3 year old’s fingers are well away from controls yet still holding the mixer
22. 3yo: “Is it done now” Me: “not yet, bit longer” (repeat times 30)
23. Weigh out and sieve flour
24. Child insists on holding the sieve and shaking it vigorously
25. End up looking like 2 snowmen
26. Wipe off as much of the flour as possible and add in a little extra to make up for what was lost
27. Turn back for a second to put sieve away, turn back to see toddler eating mixture
28. Slightly more raised voice “Stop eating it, leave it alone”
29. Fold in flour
30. Child adds in another spoon of unsieved flour while you are distracted with the folding
31. Child shakes in salt that you left out from gathering biscuit ingredients at step 4
32. Getting a little stressed “NOOOO, we don’t need salt in this recipe”
33. 3yo: “but I want salt”, Me (through gritted teeth): “no, this recipe doesn’t use salt, it wont taste very nice”
34. Wrestle salt off child as he is trying to add more salt
35. Go to get out cake tins – realise part of the tin you need is elsewhere after making a cake and taking it to a relative/friend a year ago
36. Make do with 2 slightly too big cake tins instead
37. [Shouting] “STOP EATING THE CAKE MIX, you can lick the bowl and spoon in a minute!!!”
38. Distribute mix between tins
39. Go to put tins in oven
40. Realise oven isn’t on
41. Set oven to required temp and wait
42. and wait
43. 3 year old starts shaking flour packet
44. You don’t clear it up and resign yourself to the pasty white look!
45. You DO put away ingredient packets you no longer need
46. Oven heats up and you place tins in oven
47. 3yo: “Is it ready yet?” Me “No, I’ve just put it in the oven”, 3yo:”I want cake, mummy, I want cake…Mummy, is it ready now, I want cake…can I have cake now?” Me: “NO, Not until the beeper goes off and when its cool”
48. Get ingredients ready for butter icing – remember from when you went to get ingredients for biscuits at step 4 that you didn’t have enough butter – still don’t have enough butter – use clover!
49. Help child sieve icing & cocoa powder into butter
50. Clearly having not learned from last time – end up now a white and brown marbled snowman!
51. Wrestle fork off child who starts stirring mixture before there is no dry mix left in the butter
52. Beeper goes off for cake, tip out the crispy biscuits (meant to be cake) onto cooling wire
53. “Mummy, I want to see cake, I can’t see cake, Mummy where’s cake, I want to see”
54. Once biscuit/cake cooled, spoon on mix
55. Poor yourself LARGE glass of wine, break off 2 bits of biscuit/cake, sod the cleaning, sit down and consume
56. Go to answer doorbell and wonder why the gas man gives you a peculiar look!