Fecklet (who is TWO! can you believe it?!) was up at 4.30 this morning, though to give him his due, he did play by himself in his room until 5 after I explained to him that I needed more sleep. Still, the morning drags on a bit when it starts at 5, so to make some use of the a.m. hours we made some apple and raisin muffins to share with his little friends this afternoon.
Fecklet loves to cook. He pretends all the time, with an assortment of bowls, pans and uncooked pasta shapes. His real-life cooking experience until this morning consisted of arranging vegetables on an uncooked pizza (the mushrooms got bunched up a bit, and quite a few peppers were waylaid by mouth between hand and pizza, but that’s fine), helping with a batch of chocolate chip cookies (the chocolate chips were added one by one), and dumping cans of kidney beans and tomatoes into the last chilli I made.
This morning, I gave him the job of carrying the measuring cups and spoons into the living room, where there’s a table low enough for him to reach. Then he carried in the apples, baking powder, sugar and flour. I left him for a moment, to put some butter in the microwave to melt, and suddenly I heard the unmistakable sound of sugar being poured from its container.
“Fecklet!” I cried. (Well, this isn’t literally true; as you will have figured out, my kid’s real name isn’t Fecklet, that’s his internet alias, because I’m carefully building him up to have an identity crisis in later life, when it will do the most damage. Anyway—) “Fecklet!” I fictionally cried. “No! Wait for Mummy!” And I booked it from the kitchen into the living room, picturing sugar all over my floor.
He was standing, sugar bag in both hands, carefully pouring it into the cup measure. He hadn’t spilled a single grain—not until I barrelled in, anyway, when he wavered and spilled a little bit on the table. Of course he burst into tears, and I had to cuddle him and tell him how proud I was of him for being so careful.
After the muffins came out, he carried one of them all around the house in both hands, crowing, “I made it!”
Love it! My girl often comes back from pre-school with cakes they have all (every mucky faced, licky fingered,snot nosed, sneezing, one of them) made togther, and they taste, hmm, odd.
These taste odd, I must admit. But it’s my fault, as I decided Kosher rock salt would be easier for the boy to measure than normal salt. It says on the package you can bake with it, but in this case, it didn’t quite dissolve and every now and then you get a salty bit.
At least I think that’s where the salty bits come from.
Love it. I remember those days! Ds1 was more the cook than the one you met. That specialized in making himself chocolate milk….somewhere I was a picture that will come out for his 21st
lx
That’s awesome. He’ll ask you to tell this story many times…
Oh, bless!
I used to cook with the kids when I ran a pre-school in a previous life and they ADORED it. They were so much more careful than you’d expect.
Mind you, it used to take the whole morning to create 24 small cup cakes…
Well at least he has not done what my youngest did. When he was about that age, He poured salt into the sugar container WITHOUT me realising it. I then decided to make cookies with a teenager that was over. She was being very polite about everything and did not say how awful the dough tasted. I happened to try a bit…
My youngest has never been allowed to forget the time…but he is a good cook now, even though he likes to improve recipes.
PS
To this day — I do taste the sugar before I start measuring it…
Liz, I’m sure Son1 will just looooove that photo…
Rachel, next time I’m taking pictures.
Jan, what colour were the cupcakes? I’m guessing a nice shade of grey? ggg
LOL Michelle!! Tasting is a very good idea!
We always used to add cocoa powder to the mixture. Not stupid, us playgroup leaders.
Ahhhhh, very wise.