Baking Adventures :)

Last week it was my best friend's birthday.  As soon as I told my Little One that it was her birthday, she said "she needs a birthday cake!"  So I am not usually a baker, but he was so excited about the idea of baking a cake that I pulled out the cookbook for a recipe.  He wanted to do it "all by himself", and he honestly did! :)  I would explain to him what to do next and he would do it.  I did the measuring and he would do the pouring.  It was a great homeschooling lesson about following directions and numbers. :)

Baking a Birthday Cake

1.  Here he is buttering the pan.  He LOVED the sensory feel of the butter on the pan and squishing it around with his fingers.

2. He then placed the flour in the pan on top of the butter.  He wanted to play with the flour and make designs but I didn't think that would work too well when it actually came to baking the cake.

3.  Here he is mixing in the eggs.  He REALLY wanted to crack the eggs himself, but I didn't think that was the best plan.  So I did the cracking and he did the stirring.

I didn't take pictures of the rest of those cake making steps, probably because I was holding the bowl while LO poured the mix into the pan. And then I was holding the pan to put it in the hot oven.

We let the cake cool in the fridge overnight and then we got to work with decorating the cake.

4.  We were making a strawberry shortcake, so LO wanted to cut up the strawberries to decorate the cake.  I got off of a Freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org/) this great Pampered Chef "safe" knife for kids.  LO loves to cut things up with it and it won't hurt him :)   So he cut up all the strawberries for the cake.

5. Here is our finished cake :)  LO had so much fun decorating it!

6. And here is my best friend enjoying her cake :)  LO even picked out the candles for the cake.

7.  The birthday girl and her baker :)

Baking Bread
After baking the cake, LO decided that he wanted to bake some bread.  This time we decided to pull out the Kitchen Aid mixer for the job :)

Here are some pictures of LO pouring in the ingredients.

 

And here is our finished bread :) Yummy!