Sunday 18 September 2011

Baking with kids...

Is it wrong that my desire for perfect baking sometimes outweighs my desire to not leave permanent emotional scars on my children...?
I love baking with my kids... well, in my ‘Mother-of-the-Year’ fantasy I do.  There, safe in my fantasy world, I’m happily whipping, beating, creaming and folding (I’m wearing a gorgeous frilly pinny, and I’m a real hotty... about a size 8, but still with boobs and hips... you know, only a smidgen from reality...). 
In this dream-land my kids are expert bakers: understanding the necessity of measuring ingredients and not dumping an entire bag of flour into the creamed butter and sugar; never sneezing into the cake mix; they wouldn’t dream of grabbing the butter and biting out a large chunk; it simply would not occur to them to shove a mouthful of the mixed dry ingredients into their mouth - and on finding it ‘not to their liking‘ spitting it back into the mixture (although, who does like to eat flour and baking powder?)  
Nope, my fantasies are NOT reality, not even close. 

In reality, I tend to get a wee bit stressed, I seem to be constantly saying “don’t put the spoon theret!”, “don’t tip the whole bag in!”, “please don’t pick your nose while we’re baking”.  I end up feeling like the kids are trying to sabotage MY baking efforts.  My baking, which must be moist and light, pretty and tasty!  It must not contain boogies, spit particles, egg shells or excessive amounts of baking powder (*note: one cup of baking powder is ALWAYS excessive).  

Perhaps I'm just expecting too much... I think we'll just stick to baking with play doh.

2 comments:

  1. What I do is keeping them so busy with fetching and putting ingredients back then licking the bowl and spoon when I am done that it doesn't give them a chance to stick their fingers in the mix. Sometimes I let them stir. I also try simple recipes and then pre-measure the ingredients and let them throw them in at the right time while I mix. But mostly I am really against mess and have no real idea how to involve my kids in baking without the mess. I am glad I am not the only one. My sister-in-law is good at baking with kids so always felt guilty and like something was horribly wrong with me and I was a terribly un-fun mother.

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  2. Yep, I do all the same wonderfully not-actually-baking diversions with the kids too... but they're on to me! And I now have complaints of "you never let us do the 'real' cooking"! Hahaha, too right I don't! I don't like boogers in my cupcakes! ;-)

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