Baking with a baby; probably not the easiest thing or the cleanest but pretty fun and cute to watch! Wednesday afternoon I thought it would be nice to bake something with Amelia and we had plenty of ingredients to make vanilla cupcakes with a chocolate ganache to go on top. Nice and simple.
Amelia’s not actually got fully involved with baking before so I was really interested to see what she would do plus it was an afternoon away from toys and doing something new.
Before I let Amelia get involved I weighed all the ingredients out in bowls and melted the chocolate for the ganache and had that setting in the fridge.
We have the cutest apron and bakers hat from My 1st years that I obviously had to dress Amelia up in. She looked so so so cute although she didn’t keep the hat on for very long. Its just a little fabric apron and its gone in the wash and come out looking brand new again so I’m pleased with that. You know how much I love personalised items and when they look this cute it really is the perfect accessory for your baking friend!
I think when baking with a baby/toddler it is important not to expect too much! I love my baking and I’m quite a perfectionist and a bit of a control freak in the kitchen (as in if I’m not cooking I don’t like watching someone else cook in a different way) so I thought I would actually find it really hard to watch Amelia splattering mixture everywhere and rubbing chocolate covered hands into the cakes but it was so nice watching her get involved and seeing how much she could do. I also only let her do things that I knew she could do and jobs that she could be pleased with finishing.
First of all she put the cake cases in the tin. Amelia was really good at this and she could choose which cases she wanted and put them where-ever she liked in the baking tray.
I let her do lots of stirring and tipping ingredients into different bowls and turning the dials on the mixer (just to get rid of any left over lumps!) She loved stirring and peeping in to see all the different ingredients. We talked through what it all was too with Amelia repeating the odd word I said.
I then put the baking tray onto a chair and the cake mixture bowl on the floor and let Amelia fill up the cases. I showed her how to do it and just pointed to different cases and she filled them up. This was the messy bit!!!! Mixture went all over the chair and floor but sometimes you just have to let them get messy. It was so cute watching her puzzle out where to put the mixture and looking at her concentrating face.
Thankfully she didn’t even think about putting the spoon in her mouth until right at the end. And obviously had to give the dog some too!! Don’t fret the spoon got taken straight away once the dog had licked it and I put the rest of the mixture in the cases that were lacking some.
Once they were cooked and cooled I got Amelia set up to decorate them with the chocolate ganache and some sprinkles.
This was the bit that didn’t go down so well…after decorating about 4/5 cupcakes Amelia decided that the ganache tasted too good to put on the cakes and that she would just eat it instead, including what was already on the cakes. This quickly turned into a nightmare meltdown situation of a screaming Amelia with chocolate covered hands running around the kitchen because she wanted the chocolate. I had to finish decorating them myself when she was calming down in the lounge.
Minus the meltdown it was really fun to get her as involved as possible and I was surprised with how much she could do. It’s really important to give babies and toddlers the opportunity to experience new things and tasks that involve a bit of mess.
Amelia was very excited when it came to tasting her product after dinner (sharing with Mummy!)
Do you brave baking with your little one?
Thanks for reading!!xxx
Alice & Amelia 