Aliyah Rose has been learning a lot about baking this past year. It’s really fun for Aliyah to do her own baking because she can weigh and measure ingredients, stir them together, help pour the batter into pans and cupcake trays, frost the treats, and best of all – clean up! She isn’t big enough to manage the stove, oven, or electric mixer; but everything else is a piece of cake.
Pre-COVID social baking, it’s what all the kids are raving about!
Some of the delicious treats we have baked this year, and illustrated in this post, include:
1. Perfect Angel cupcakes with cream-cheese strawberry frosting – for Daddy’s birthday.
2. Chocolate cake with peppermint frosting – for Mommy’s birthday.
3. English Flapjacks – think oatmeal bars with your favorite fruit and/or nuts mixed in.
4. Strawberry Tapioca Pudding – chock full of fresh strawberries and love!
Everything was made from scratch – no boxes or cans were harmed in the making of this blog! Everything was easy enough for a happy four-year old to prepare, with a little help from Grams, Granddad, and the Boy Next Door. Aliyah did almost all of the weighing, measuring, and hand mixing, and Grams did all the electric mixing, stove-work, and dealing with the oven. Granddad assisted both us girls, and looked fabulous doing it.
Aliyah learned that the very first thing you need to create the perfect confectionery delight is the perfect recipe. She searched in her own little cookbook for cupcakes, but all she could find was a recipe that uses cake mix. That’s not perfect! *rolls eyes*
Luckily, Grams’ trusty old Betty Crocker cookbook has a wonderful recipes for angel food cake and chocolate cake, which we used for the birthday cakes/cupcakes. Grams found a strawberry pudding online and substituted tapioca for the cornstarch, since we were out of cornstarch. For the oatmeal bars we received a wonderfully decadent recipe from @cake-queen-16, a young British lady of Instagram fame. Thank you Miss Cake Queen! You totally reign! *curtsies politely*
Top bakers must sometimes use a kitchen scale to measure their ingredients. Granddad here showed Aliyah how to tare the scale, which is just a fancy way to say we set the scale to zero with a bowl on top. After all, we only want to weigh what goes *into* the bowl, and not the bowl itself! It also helps if you are dressed like a Valentine superhero. (That’s a cape, not an old pink towel. Sheesh.)
Aliyah Rose carefully weighs out the oats for her Amazing English Flapjacks!
Aliyah has also learned about how to crack eggs. This is not as easy as it looks. Sometimes we squish the eggs, so it’s better to crack them one at a time into a little bowl. That way it’s easy to pick out any shell and make sure the egg is not rotten.
You also need to carefully measure ingredients with your very own measuring spoons. Aliyah has her own little set, but we somehow lost the tablespoon, and only have the teaspoon, half-teaspoon, and quarter teaspoons left. That’s ok, because 4 teaspoons = 1 Tablespoon. I think. Also, we taught her that if the recipe calls for 1 T, that capital T stands for Tablespoon. If it calls for 1 t, that means one teaspoon. Easy as pie. Or pi, if you prefer.
OK, you have a bowl full of interesting stuff in front of you. Now what? You stir! Watching all those ingredients come together to become a wonderful cake batter is a real eye-opener. Before you just had a pile of milk, eggs, flour, baking powder, etc. And presto-chango, now there is a recognizable chocolate cake batter. Or whatever you’re making. Plus cake batter is much nicer to taste-test than raw eggs and flour.
Wow, this doesn’t look half bad. Maybe I should taste it now?
After the batter has been thoroughly stirred (with a little assist from Grams) Aliyah gets to help spray the cake pans and pour in the batter. Which she does with great panache but not great accuracy. Ok, so there was a little spillage. But hey, that’s why we have dishrags. 🙂
Grams pops our prepped goodies into the oven and sets the oven timer, while Aliyah sets her own timer. Hers is better of course; Gram’s is just a backup. *winks* Also, we discovered that when our cakes are done, they smell wonderful. That amazing aroma wafting through the kitchen only happens when you have a nicely baked cake in the oven that’s ready to come out. Sort of like cake’s version of a ring-tone!
Aliyah gets to supervise Grams as she takes our cakes out of the oven, sets them to rest a few minutes, and then carefully turns them out onto cooling racks. Aliyah likes to take little nibbles at this point to quality check her work. Smart girl!
Strawberry cupcakes fresh from the oven…. yum!
So much goodness, but wait, there’s more! Now we get to frost our cakes. Except the oatmeal bars – they were perfect just the way they were.
Now you don’t think we were going to settle for greasy canned frosting do you? I sure hope not, because that’s just all kinds of gross. Nope, we’re going to do it the flavorful way. With real butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk. Disclaimer: we did use strawberry jam in the strawberry frosting. What!?
Once you are done frosting your confectionery delights, there is still the very important job of cleaning up. Aliyah excels at this part – she always cleans the bowl and spoon for me. Such a good helper! And no, Grams did NOT leave extra frosting in the bowl just for her. Why do you ask?
Finally, we get to share our final product with Granddad, Mommy, Daddy, the neighbors, and any other innocent bystanders we can find. At home Aliyah likes to say a little blessing before we eat, but she’s always been keen on doing things right and giving thanks where thanks are due. Gratitude is an attitude!
But where do all our delicious ingredients come from???
Aliyah has been learning a lot about where many of our cooking and baking ingredients come from.
- Fruits, vegetables, and grains come from plants that we can grow in our garden. We have our own little learning garden at home, with potatoes, asparagus, marigolds, watermelon, and other yummies. There is also a community garden nearby where she can see what other, more experienced gardeners are growing, like kale and broccoli. This is a wonderful resource as she can learn from master gardeners who teach classes and answer questions from beginners like her.
- Mushrooms are fungi that require special care. You should never pick wild mushrooms because some of them are poisonous and will make you vomit (or worse…)
- Some flowers are edible, like dandelions, roses, marigolds, and chrysanthemums, but never pick of plants you don’t grow yourself. You don’t want to eat pesticides by mistake!
- We learned where milk, cheese, and eggs come from too. Most of the milk and cheese we use comes from cows, but we can get dairy from other mammals too, like goats and even yaks! Eggs come from chicken, because they’re birds. We visited Oxon Hill Farm Park in Maryland last year where she met a milk cow and LOTS of pretty chickens! We also went to a county fair where there were not only cows and chickens, but also goats, sheep, llamas, and other farm animals.
Check out our YouTube Cooking Videos:
- Cracking Eggs: (https://youtu.be/6JB7vF6tS6U)
- Making English Flapjacks (Oatmeal Bars): https://youtu.be/S58aiXvCrIk
- Aliyah Rose Blesses the Meal: https://youtu.be/kGEo3bgtD5E