Kitchen Helper

We celebrated Cade's 8th birthday earlier this month, so I baked him a Wacky Cake. The kids didn't remember ever having that kind of cake before (although they have). It's an old recipe, a funny one, in which you mix the entire cake in the baking pan. I can remember making a few of these as a teenager, but what I remember even more vividly is walking into the back porch at Grandma's house and getting a whiff of the chocolaty goodness coming from her oven...and waiting for the cake to be done and removed to the cooling rack and scrambling for a plate and fork, even burning tongue and lips for a bite. Oh yum. 

But I digress. Elsa was intrigued by the mixing method for this cake, and she helped me stir it all together with a fork before popping it into the oven. 

Cade chose Chicken Fried Rice for the main course, and then we all enjoyed some Wacky Cake for dessert. Caroline was bouncing off the walls for the rest of the evening, and now I'm wondering if 2 cups of sugar in 1 cake is a lot? 

Elsa has generally been very helpful in the kitchen recently. She always asks to make soup (and the answer has been 'no' since the last time when there was a large mess to clean up) and accepts helping me as a second-best opportunity to get involved in the kitchen goings-on. 

She wanted to dress the chicken last time I threw one in the crock-pot, but I convinced her that she'd better watch to learn first. And she decided she didn't want to touch the chicken's back end after all. She loves to crack eggs, though, and one day not too long ago she made our scrambled eggs mostly on her own. She always asks me if I did these things with Grammie when I was a kid her age. Unfortunately, the answer is usually 'no' as I was more interested in playing Barbies or running through the fields making mud pies (or maybe Grammie knew how much extra clean-up there would be and discouraged my involvement...I don't really remember. But it's too bad because my husband probably would have suffered through fewer months of tacos, chili, and Hamburger-Helper for dinner in that first year of marriage if I had learned and loved to cook when I was younger).

Yesterday Elsa got in on the tail-end of my bread-making endeavor. She tried kneading after the first rise, but there was a lot of dough, and it was a bit too much for a slight five year old girl to handle. (I, however, had a fine time slamming the dough around on the counter! I need to remember how therapeutic that action can be.) She did get to brush some butter on top of the loaves before they went into the oven, though.

And then we all enjoyed some tasty Italian bread for lunch today...with more butter, of course--Caroline's favorite! Well, most everybody's favorite!