I make no apologies for the fact that I love baking and this seems to be something that I have passed onto my children as they are always happy to don an apron and help out if I am creating something yummy. Little Miss A is especially fond of baking (mainly fuelled by her love of cake I think) and whilst we have some mummy and A time during the day, it has become part of our routine to have one or two baking sessions during the week.
This week, we were sent a gorgeous box of goodies to help us with our baking from the women’s lifestyle magazine Good to Know. Good to Know have created a really interesting guide to bake sales – from planning the event to making a show-stopper of a cake which includes top tips from Great British Bake Off legends Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry.
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| Lots of lovely baking goodies |
A was almost beside herself when she saw all of these things and so in spite of the heat, this week, we both put on our new aprons and set to work.
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| I’m ready to bake mummy |
As you can see, A was particularly pleased with her apron and matching chef’s hat, which does look very cute. She is really good now when we bake as I set all of the ingredients out for her in different bowls and talk her though the steps. She can even break the eggs herself now and quite happily gets stuck in with even the heavier mixing.
We had a lovely afternoon making the cakes and then I showed A how to make butter cream and we iced them and decorated them. They didn’t turn out too bad either and tasted lovely. Although I did ask A whether she had enjoyed making them, her reply was that she had really enjoyed licking the bowl!
While I’m here, I thought that I would share our very simple recipe as it never fails and apart from the weighing, A can now do this recipe without me telling her what to do.
Ingredients
175g butter
175g caster sugar
175g self raising flour
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Method
Preheat oven to 180 c and place the cake cases into your cake tin.
In a large bowl, beat the sugar into the butter until it is soft and creamy.
In a separate bowl whisk the eggs.
Add the vanilla essence.
Add the flour and eggs to the mixture in small amounts and mix in well until all of the ingredients are mixed together and make a thick creamy batter.
Spoon the mixture into the cake cases so that they are at least two thirds full. Place in the middle of a hot oven and cook for 10 – 12 minutes or until they are risen, golden brown and firm to touch.
Leave to cool and decorate.
We decorated ours with butter cream which we made using 150g softened butter and 250g sieved icing sugar, which we beat until combined well and then piped onto the cakes and added the sugar decorations.
We were sent a box of baking equipment by Good to Know for this blog post. All opinions and images are my own.
