Baking with a toddler for Valentine’s Day

Something pretty amazing happened in our house last week. Wait for it… I did some baking! With the toddler! Twice!

For me this is pretty much reaching the pinnacle of domestic achievement. I am one of those people who loves the idea of baking but the reality is that I’m not a very confident, or patient, cook so it rarely happens. And throwing a toddler into the mix (not literally, that would be cruel!) when trying to create anything edible is a whole new ball game. But I did it and, amazingly, it was a success. Enjoyable even. I could almost high-five myself as I type!

Ok so our first culinary creation, made last Monday, did use a packet mix and was one we’d done once before but it was a great confidence builder – for me not the toddler! Peppa Pig Muddy Puddle Cup Cakes went down well with Little Miss the first time we made them and the ready-to-go dry mix does make everything so much quicker. It’s an ideal option when time is a bit tight and I would definitely recommend them, especially if you’re new to the joys of baking with a two-year-old. Mine is now starting to learn the art of waiting for food to cook but the first time we made them she kept asking ‘are they ready yet’ from the moment I tore open the box! Start simple I say.

Having emerged from that baking session unscathed I wanted us to make something a bit special for Daddy for Valentine’s Day. My husband is a whizz in the kitchen and pretty much does all of the ‘proper’ cooking for us. I’m great at sticking things in the oven, reheating stuff or putting on a pan of pasta or veg but that’s largely where my talents end. So me doing baking for him is something that shows a bit of thought and effort on my part. I hope.

And what says ‘I love and appreciate you’ better than a batch of handmade gingerbread hearts, lovingly made and decorated with a toddler who may have licked the icing on several of them and coughed over the rest?!

On a serious note though, I do want Little Miss to learn how to prepare food properly. I want her to enjoy being in the kitchen and to grow up feeling more confident than I have about cooking. And I want us to have fun together. Our two little baking sessions have been as much about me learning as they have her. I want to get better at this sort of thing and set a positive example. I have happy memories of making fairy cakes with my own mother.

So we made gingerbread. Little Miss enjoyed helping to weigh all the ingredients out with me. She loved smelling the ginger and cinnamon and stirring things in. I refused her request to ‘do the egg’. I’m not ready for that! And she did keep spilling the mixture everywhere and I kept sweeping it back into the bowl only to have to do it again seconds later. But she was happy, engaged and entertained for a good hour or so.

I’m pretty sure her wandering fingers interfered with our electronic scales at some point though because let’s just say that when I came to start rolling out the dough we had a few ‘issues’. The old me would have panicked, chucked the lot in the bin in a huff and gone to the shops but now I couldn’t let me little girl down by giving up. So I took a deep breath, took a punt on rectifying it and hoped for the best. I had no idea quite how what we put in the oven was going to turn out but, as luck would have it, it emerged perfectly edible. Tasty even.  Another lesson learned.

While our biscuits were cooking, it was lovely to watch Little Miss playing with the leftover dough. She was very protective of it and divided it up into little pieces, talking to herself about making cake for her dolly. So cute!

We then made up some pink icing and got all the sprinkles out of the cupboard for some serious decorating. And voila!

And I was brave enough to do all this on Friday 13th!

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Baking Peppa Pig cup cakes…

Two of my toddler’s favourite things in life right now are Peppa Pig and cake so when I spotted the Peppa Pig Muddy Puddle Cup Cake mix pack in Tesco a few weeks ago I suspected I might be onto a winner!

I’ll confess now that I’m pretty *coughs shyly* underwhelming when it comes to cooking. I once managed to burn fried eggs! Our family is very well looked after most days by Daddy chef. I lack confidence in the kitchen and as a result my inclination is to steer well clear whenever I can.

But I don’t want to be like that and I certainly don’t want it to rub off on Little Miss. And, when I’m in the right mood, I do secretly enjoy a spot of baking. Everybody loves cake and there’s generally less to go wrong with sweet compared to savoury! Less chance people could get sick if I screw up!

So, keen to give Little Miss her first foray into home baking – and perhaps just a little bit inspired by Great British Bake Off mania – I snapped up the Peppa mix for a bargain £1.69.

The pack does only make 12 cakes, meaning the fruits of our labour were never going to last very long in our house. But the ease of using the mix and time it took were perfect for a toddler and even I found the simple recipe relatively stress-free.

We made the cakes while Little Miss’s baby brother slept and the whole activity took less than an hour – and given that Little Miss wanted to know when she could eat the cake within seconds of me first opening the box, this was important!

All the key ingredients are there for you and ready to go, meaning no fiddling around weighing everything out. You just need to add water and an egg and then you’re ready to unleash your child and a wooden spoon to mix it all together – until they get tired, which invariably they do after about 30 seconds! We then used an electric hand mixer to finish it off.

The mixture is then ready to spoon into the cake cases, which Little Miss loved setting out on the baking tray at the start, before going in the oven.

About 15 minutes later they came out and we left them to cool, amid much protest from my hungry little cooking partner, while we made the muddy puddle chocolate icing – which Little Miss lovingly sneezed into as well as constantly dipping her fingers in and eating while I tried to stir it into the right consistency!

Once ready, you then simply splodge a dollop of icing on each cake. As you can see my dollops varied quite wildly in size!

Muddy puddles in place, you then finish off with one of the Peppa printed sugar decorations on the top – or ‘stickers’ as Little Miss called them.

And voila! You’re done. The cakes are fairly small in size, an ideal portion for little ones but gone in one bite for some greedy adults (who will remain nameless, ‘Daddy Pig’). This adult thought they were pretty darn tasty too!

Overall, I’d say our first little cooking activity was a bonafide success, much to my amazement. Yes, it was a very simple pack mix but it’s given me confidence to try other things in the future and hopefully get Little Miss interested in cooking from an early age.

And finally, of course, Little Miss got to eat her our handiwork. I think her face probably says it all. Yum!