Baking Buddies

I'm not sure what it is, but when the going gets rough, I head to the kitchen. I've designated the kitchen as "my space." With the exception of my bedroom, it's the one space I demand be neat, organized, and free of clutter. That doesn't always happen and when it doesn't, it makes me very, very sad.

Cooking for Grace and Luke is challenging. One day they're great eaters and love spaghetti and meatballs. The next day they're terrible eaters and hate spaghetti and meatballs. I've stopped having great expectations for mealtime and now just hope to get through a meal without totally flipping out anyone. I wouldn't care if they didn't want to eat dinner but please, please do not get hysterical when cookies are withheld.

I've put all my cooking hopes into baking. I love to bake. Cakes, cookies, muffins, breads, cupcakes. You can usually tell what kind of week we're having based on the number of baked goods in the house. It's not like I have a need to eat all the baked goods (though I am a stress eater), I just like the process. Plus the kids generally like what I bake which makes me happy. At lease they'll eat something I work hard on making.

The other day Grace joined me in the kitchen for some cookie baking. Grace loves to bake with me. About a year ago I put her on a chair next to me to just watch. After several falls off the chair, she can now stand next to me without my hand on the seat of her pants waiting to catch her. Then she graduated to mixing her own bowl of flour (what Luke does now). These days she helps measure, mix, and knows how to set and turn on the bowl mixer. She understands some things can't be over mixed, the importance of scraping the bowl mid-way through mixing, and that one should always sift dry ingredients before adding to wet. In short, she's a good student. She announced to me sweetly, "My love mommy time. My wish we could bake ALL DAY!" Me too.

I was tired of the same old chocolate chips. They're always a crowd pleaser but I wanted something different full well knowing it would send Tom into an apoplectic fit of depression. We made a recipe from the Cake Doctor book that uses chocolate cake mix. It called for chocolate chips but I thought that was a lot of chocolate so we mixed in some white chips too. We (meaning Grace, Luke, me, Abbie, Brendan, and Joann) all really like them but my husband said he wasn't crazy about them. Oh well. Can't win them all. Here are some pics from the fun:

Grace loves to wear her "mattress" when she bakes. It's an apron Grace. An apron.

Grace carefully selected the chips and measured them.

Very excited to dump them in!This is what Grace looks like on a sugar craze

Very, very proud of the cookies she made. As well she should be!