Baking

I have always listed baking as one of my hobbies/passions, but lately I have been very into it. I am not sure if it is due to the weather this winter/hoax of Spring or pregnancy cravings, but I have been puttering around the kitchen with my dear friends butter, flour, and sugar close to every two weeks or so for the last nine months. Although I would not classify myself as an “organic, back to the earth mommy” I have to admit, in these days of food recalls, that there is some peace of mind in knowing exactly what is in that cake/cookie/pie that I am eating and feeding to my family.

Anyhow, as last Wednesday was a gray rainy day, I decided to while away some time by making a chocolate-cinnamon marble cake. I found the recipe in a chocolate book that I took out from the library. I have been on a quest for the perfect coffee cake recipe as of late so I decided to give this one a go. Alice was happily watching The Backyardigans in the living room. I was happily assembling ingredients in the kitchen. We stayed in our separate spheres until I turned the mixer on; then, like Pavlov’s dog, Alice came running. She grabbed her step stool and positioned it right next to the mixer. As one of the last ingredients to be put in the mix, I added a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Alice took the empty bag to search for any missed morsels. Upon discovering it completely empty, she looked forlornly into the mixer and called out: “Chocolate come back!” (Wow, she is her mother’s daughter after all.) Her sadness was replaced by upmost joy when I finally shut the mixer off and gave her the beater. She took off like a shot to savor her treat in the living room. Peace and quiet at last. I began assembling the cake. It was one of those recipes where you pour half the batter into the pan, add the middle filling and then top off with the remaining batter. I was smoothing everything out when Alice returned with her perfectly clean beater. She brought her stool over to my new work location and proceeded to watch my painstaking smoothing and marbling of the cake. I was in the middle of making sure everything was even when out of the corner of my eye I saw a quick movement. Alice had dunked her beater back into the pan. The stinker. Despite using this as a lesson against double dipping, I don’t think my message got through. It is hard to listen when you are busy licking.

Baking Lessons

To shake things up a bit, I thought I would write about a pleasant experience with Alice. I realize that while my tales from the trenches are humorous, they could act as a form of birth control. Since my goal is laughter, and not necessarily reduction of the human population, I thought it might be nice to write about one of those sweet mommyhood moments to prove that, yes, they actually do exist, and to remind me that they exist when I forget.

Wednesday morning Alice and I were invited to a play date. I hate going to someone’s home empty handed, so I decided some homemade corn bread would be just the thing to bring. Alice, much like her father, has learned the significance of certain items coming out of the pantry. This time she not only decided to hang around the kitchen but she also hopped up on her new footstool from Ikea to get a better look. The recipe I use for corn bread is simple- just toss in a handful of ingredients, stir, put into a pan and bake. It dawned on me that this would be a good introduction to baking for Alice. I put the blue Pyrex mixing bowl in front of her and handed her each measured ingredient to dump into the bowl. She would repeat the ingredient's name right after I said it. She seemed puzzled by the flour and then it hit me. She thought I meant “flower”. I explained the difference but part of me thinks she believes if you pulverize the pretty things white powder results. Mental note: make sure she does not experiment in other people’s gardens. After the ingredients were together in the bowl, I took out two wooden spoons and we mixed everything together. Alice declared the raw batter “delicious” and I poured it into the baking pan and put it into the oven. She was very excited 20 minutes later when I took the pan from the oven and she saw the transformation from yellow runny stuff to yellow cake stuff before her eyes. It was a fun lesson for both of us. However, I don’t yet have the nerves to tackle a soufflé with her quite yet.