June 10th, 2010 -- Posted in KidsInTheKitchen, domestic engineering, family, pics |
For this “Kids in the Kitchen” baking adventure, I made the actual cake and the kids helped with the icing when they got home from school…
Avery ices our banana cake!
I have actually been baking the exact same Banana Bread since 1998! I was given the recipe at a parenting program way back when I was pregnant with Harmony. It’s a really super easy banana bread to make, and over the years I’ve added other ingredients to mix it up a little and experiment with new tastes. It tastes so fabulous with blueberries, strawberries or chocolate chips! It’s a very “kid friendly recipe” and kids of any age can help with different parts, like mushing up the bananas (they can’t really mess that up other than being a bit messy!), mixing it all up, or tossing in some of the extra ingredients.
Even though we’ve relied on this “stand by” recipe for over a decade, I was still tempted to try out this new recipe for Banana Cake that I found on a new Live Journal Community, “Amanda Bakes”. I loved that it was more of a cake than a bread, because I’d tried to turn my banana bread into cakes over the years with limited success (even with chocolate chips and chocolate icing, it was not quite cakey enough).
So this week, I tried out the Banana Cake and it was delicious! I think the cinnamon really helps add to the cakey flavour.
New banana cake recipe - mmm, cinnamon.
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April 17th, 2010 -- Posted in KidsInTheKitchen, family |
The recipes I’d had planned to do with the kids in mid-March did not pan out… I still managed to try them out, but did not have any small helpers to do that. At least they got to enjoy the eating part of the Peanut-Butter Thumbprint cookies (a recipe by Anna Olson) and the Chocolate-Orange Molten Lava cakes (in an issue of last year’s Chatelaine magazine).
Our next “Kids in the Kitchen” baking adventure finally happened in early April as my DS helped me put together an apple “pat-a-pie”. This recipe by Today’s Parent involves no rolling out of dough; just some shaping and flattening by hands (whether big or small).
We made the recipe (click here for the original version) with the optional raisins but next time I would say to make it without.
It goes really well with vanilla ice cream, of course, especially if it’s still warm. 
The next recipe I have planned for our baking activity is some simple cookies and then we’ll see what else we come across!
March 30th, 2010 -- Posted in KidsInTheKitchen, family |
Another recipe that I wanted to try out this winter was actually a recipe leftover from Christmas (when it was just too busy and overwhelming to get everything done that I’d planned to do!). These Lemon Wreath cookies were in a holiday issue of Martha Stewart Living…
And like the last recipe we tried from MLO, it was a lot of work with not a lot of “totally worth the work” taste. I know we didn’t make our dough rings thin enough (we ended up making only about two-thirds of the amount of cookies the recipe said it would produce), but I’m much less about the exactness and perfection than about getting to the end result and enjoying the experience. And I prefer recipes that cater to that style, especially when baking with the kids in tow!
My 11-year-old did a pretty good job of the extra things that my littler kiddo can’t manage, like rolling the dough and shaping the rings. Must be all that practice with play dough as a kid. 
We baked the first couple dozen and then stashed the rest in a container for freezing. We created the lemon glaze for the top as called for, but hadn’t been able to find white “non-pareils” at the store, so we had to improvise as far as sprinkles went… I opted for white and yellow stars picked out of the star mix, and Harmony chose to slather on a whole bunch of sprinkles of all sorts of colours (including chocolate sprinkles).
I would say these cookies are a great choice for people who like a lighter taste and not anything “too sweet”. The lemon glaze is the sweetest part; the base cookie is actually not very sweet at all so you could omit the topping if you wanted. The frozen cookies were baked about 1 month after going into the deep freeze and they turned out super well. The dough itself is actually really tasty too, especially when cold.
Here’s a link to the original recipe we followed: Martha Stewart Living magazine’s Lemon Wreath Cookies.
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