Baking with your kids is meant to be fun isn’t it?
Why do I bake? I mean seriously I am crap at it. Before I had kids, I lived in a house for four years and never once turned the oven on.
But for some reason now I have uber-mum fantasies. I picture myself with an alice band holding back my hair, a flowered apron and three well-behaved children slowly spooning out 20c sized circles of chocolate chip cookie dough. Together we wholesomely bake in a pristine kitchen laughing and telling knock-kock jokes.
(In my fantasies I even call them “cookies”.)
In reality my three scruffy kids, usually half in a state of undress bicker and squabble over whose turn is next while my kitchen is about as clean as the toilets at my three-year old’s pre-school.
I don’t know why I bother. The fact I am absent minded doesn’t help and that I multi-task to the extreme, so inevitably while the biscuits are in the oven (see in reality they are biscuits) I have moved onto the next task… when the thought “what’s that strange burning smell wafts through my mind..??!!!”.
So why bake? Well first and foremost it is hard to resist the faces of my three delicious children when they turn to me and say “Mama can we make cookies”.
And secondly I have this urge to be good at it. I don’t understand why I just keep f**ing it up.
My 28-step guide to baking with the kids.
1. Make the plan.
School holidays... cold rainy weather. Seems like a perfect baking day doesn’t it? I find the best way to start out is with a plan. So when those three bright little faces come at me waving their aprons I know what’s ahead. “Looks like a good day for the park kids?”
