Share Your Favorite Baking With Kids Stories...
Decorating By travelingcakeplate Updated 4 Sep 2007 , 12:44am by travelingcakeplate
Let's share our favorite baking with kids story...
My most memorable was the first time I let my little girl help as we made brownies for my husband, (her dad).
She was about 16 months old and was so eager to eat her brownies she nearly jumped in the bowl with the mixer on! 
Thank God she didn't get hurt. After I pulled her away, she just kept putting the wooden spoon into the batter and smearing it all over her face, hands, and purple outfit. She had a great time getting all dirty and I had a great time watching her learn.
I try to cherish little moments like this. I hope you do too! 
weird, but my favorite is when I was making a cake one day and my then 5 year old decided to "help". He had watched me do this several times so he grabbed a bowl, a whip, flour, eggs and milk. During this time I kept working and just watching to make sure he didn't get hurt. He then proceeded to make a "batter" that he was very proud of and went into the fridge and grabbed some leftover SPAM (I know, I know). It was cubed, so he added this to his batter and asked me how long to bake it. I couldn't help but play along as we poured this mix into a 4" round pan and put it in the oven (it actually baked). 15 minutes later, I took it out and asked him if he would like to ice it as well. He watched it like a puppy for about an hour - grabbed a spoon and asked me to share it with him 
. I told him to take the first bite since it was his cake and I didn't want to spoil it for him (thinking he would turn green at the first taste). He chewed... and thought.... grabbed the second bite and said "tastes like grandpa's spam sammywich". He was so proud of himself and as gross as it sounds, I couldn't help but grin from ear to ear watching this little boy be so happy over something so simple.
When my oldes was 2 it was very quiet......... now being a 1st time mother I did not worry... first mistake.... actually I found it was my second mistake I went to the kitchen and there I found him standing with a measuring cup full to the top with powdered sugar and very proud of himself.... What could I do I took his picture and cleaned up the rest of the 2lb bag I had left out( 1st mistake) all over him and the floor
and I learned when the house is quiet something is wrong.
by the way he grew up to be a cook.
Last time his 2yr old daughter came we made cupcakes she told everyone she sprinkled....
My favorite memory thus far was when I was making a "baby beluga" cake for my youngest sons' second birthday. Big brother, who was about 3 1/2 at the time watched with amazing patience as I worked on sculpting my first fondant piece - the beluga whale. He complimented me all the way through and enjoyed little bits of MMF as I worked. When I was done, he wanted to know if he could make something for the cake. I asked what he wanted to make and he knew right away what was missing on this arctic cake . . . a flamingo. So we mixed up some pink MMF and he got his Little People flamingo to use as a guide. When it was all done, we set it to dry and the next day, right before the guests started to arrive, he very proudly placed the flamingo front and center on the cake for his little brother's birthday. I have to admit, it was exactly what the cake was missing!
So far baking Holiday GingerBread Fun things with my boys has been most fun. Check out my pictures. Mc Queen and Train. They helped flatten and measure and cut the cookies, Then they decorate of course.
I bake cookies or cupcakes with my 2 oldest individually (only way to go for now). They do really well alone with me. They both have their own style and it's a lot of fun. It's really fun to see how proud they are to have participated when 1 or 2 friends come over and they helped prepare something!
I usually let the kids decorate their own once company comes, I fill up those plastic deco-bags, put fun tip and close it up with an elastic and off they go, sometimes the icing get's piled pretty high!
Good Luck.
ckkerber -- you're story is so cute! and that flamingo is adorable! I do hope you've written this story down in his scrapbook!
I can't wait until my little ones are old enough to help in the kitchen. I have a 2y.o. and a 6 mo. old.
My granddaughter became my official "egg cracker". She liked to crack the eggs. She'd stand on a stood, wearing her apron, with her hair pulled back, and crack gramma's eggs and put them in a bowl. She could count so I'd tell her I needed 4 eggs in the bowl. I look down and there are 5 eggs in there.
"Kelli, I only needed 4 eggs."
"Look! I did 5!"
"But if I only needed 4, why did you do 5?"
"Because I WANTED to do 5!"
So I started just laying out the number of eggs I needed "cracked"!
She was really excited when Santa brought her an Easy-Bake oven. She looked at me and said "Banna, I'm going to take your cookie business!!"
(when she was little, she couldn't say 'gramma' .... it came out 'banna'. Thus the company name!) 
I have 2 stories. . .My 17 y/o DSD wanted to make me a cake since i am always making cakes for someone else. . .She did a great job on the cake itself but when she made her version of BC she used margarine intstead of butter (she says there is no difference 
) the margarine she used was from the tub I make garlic toast from so we had garlic/margarine BC, not so tasty. The gesture was very sweet!
The next is baking with my DS making gumpaste figurines. He made a sweet panda bear and made it a hat out of a blue Yoplait foil lid. I'll have to find a picture of both! I still have my gumpaste panda!
Elle
I love these stories! The flamingo was darling and the garlic icing is priceless! lol
When my kids are younger I cook with them and then slowly nudge them into going solo. My oldest is 13 and makes awesome cookies. One day she'd been making her specialty (dark chocolate fudge with peppermint patty chunks) when my husband came in and snagged one. As he was walking out of the kitchen chewing he said, "Oh yeah, she's gonna have a chubby husband!" She just giggled and beamed.
My second oldest is 11 and tends to be one of those helpless people (the kind that drive me nuts! lol) If she's going to do something I have to leave the room because one of two things will happen; 1. I'll take over or 2. she'll ask me for help with every stinking step (and then I'll take over!)
A week or so ago we had picked a bunch of huckleberries and were going to try out an old recipe we'd gotten from the paper. She asked if she could make it herself so I let her (and came to cc so I would leave her alone!) Awhile later she came out upset because she'd accidently added all of the salt at once (the recipe had you add part to the batter and part to a hot water mixture poured over the batter right before baking). I told her it probably wasn't a big deal and just proceed anyway.
Cake baked (in my heart shaped pan no less!) We took it out to cool a bit and by then it was bedtime. Next day I rewarmed it (best served that way) and let her and her brother have some. My son comes into my bedroom (where I am again on CC! 
) and asks for sugar because it's really salty! I tasted it and my face immdiately sucked into a pucker (probably because all that salt removed all the moisture from my body! ) I told him we'd have to just toss it because there was no way it was edible (we could have dried it and hung the stuff from the Christmas tree as one of those salt dough ornaments!)
Whenever there is a mistake I go through the recipe with the child in question and we try to figure out what happened. Well, she was supposed to add 3 TBS of sugar and 1/2 tsp of salt. The salt was listed directly under the sugar so you can guess what happened! She was very upset that she'd done it but I told her "You'll probably never make that mistake again!" As long as she learns from it, it's all good!
My son's first cake he ever decorated is my avatar picture. As you can see from the picture, he was very happy with the results!
Sorry that was so long! (And I still have one more kid! 
)
One Christmas season, my DD (then about 7) was having a hard time waiting for DH and I to get the Christmas tree in the stand so she could decorate it. She was bugging us unmercifully, and we were already frustrated b/c we couldn't get the dang tree in the stand (we have since bought a prelit, artificial tree...LOL). Tired of hearing her whine, I finally snapped, "Why don't you go in the kitchen and make us some chocolate chip cookies or something?!?!"
Dang it if the kid didn't come back in twenty minutes, asking if I would put the cookie tray into the oven. She had pulled out the recipe, mixed them up from scratch, and they were ready to bake. Not only did she follow the recipe exactly, but she also added her own special touch (lemon juice), and they were the best dang chocolate chip cookies ever!
She was my reluctant partner when I started cake decorating...she took Wilton Course 1 with me, but then didn't go on. She prefers the baking part. We make a good team!
Great stories, keep 'em coming.
indydebi, I love the story behind the name bannas cookies!
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