Baking With Kids.

A couple weeks ago Eva and I were homebound after she developed a pretty bad cough. The others went off for a playdate one Sunday and she was feeling a bit sad to be left behind. There are pretty much two things that redirect my kids in a time of distress… a walk, and the prospect of baking. Enter: Funfetti.

This was one of those kits I bought in January in preparation for Valentine’s Day and then Valentine’s Day came and went and we still hadn’t made the cupcakes. Oops! And yes, occasionally we’ll bake from scratch (like… at Christmas time!) but for the most part, box kits are where it’s at.

I learned many years ago, that depending on the age of the child, it tends to work really well if you take two minutes and lay out all the ingredients you’ll need. There’s nothing like telling a three year old to “hang on a minute” while you’re looking for something only to turn around and find the eggs on the floor. So any time I invite my kids to bake, I prepare the environment first.

Since she’s only three, I pre-measured all the ingredients. If this had been Javi, or even Lola, we probably could have made a lesson out of the measuring cups, but for Eva… she just wants to pour. And since I was going to be eating the cupcakes, I wanted them to have the correct ingredients.

The next best thing to pouring ingredients is using a whisk. Definitely.

After it was time to place the liners in the pan and then scoop the batter into the cupcake tins. It gets a little messy but she was so proud to do it herself that I smiled and sat on my hands. 🙂

I was a little more rigid when they came out of the oven. Maybe it’s not true but I felt like whatever germs got on the cupcakes before being baked would die off in the oven. 🙂 But after… I mean, we were home because she was sick and like I said, I wanted to eat them! So I frosted them and let her spoon some sprinkles on each one. That way she didn’t touch every single cupcake!

And, they were so good!