Red Nose Cakes

Beth's preschool have a cake stall for Red Nose Day. We did a little baking so we had something to donate.
I love baking with Beth and this was one of the first times I'd felt brave enough to try it with Daniel to*. Baking is brilliant for so many early years skills, and my two were really able to focus on what I was asking them to do.
Every time we start to bake we make a point of washing our hands and tying back our hair. I also reiterate every baking session that we do not lick anything that will go back in the bowl; this has a varying success rate.
Beth decided as Daniel was new to this baking game that she would be teacher and explained to him that germs can make you poorly, so you must wash all the germs away before you can cook.

We use the same basic recipe for almost all our cakes. It's a basic sponge mix to which we add different flavours.

8oz of butter creamed with 8oz of sugar, which is mixed with 4 eggs, add 8oz of self-raising flour and a dash of the magic ingredient (vanilla extract). As the cakes are for Red Nose Day we added chopped glacé cherries this time. Using a simple recipe means that the kids quickly pick up what happens next and is great for building on their memory.
When we weigh the ingredients Beth either pours (great practice of transfer skills) or reads the scales (number recognition) she also counts out the eggs and part way through I will ask if we've added x amount how many more do we need? (basic subtraction).

Beth pouring the sugar

Daniel had a go at stirring 

Beth broke the eggs

The cherries in the cake needed to chopped before being added, there was a very sweet moment when I got the chopping board out where Beth and Daniel had a impromptu drumming session.

Daniel initially put the cherries straight in his mouth but after a few goes he tried chopping but settled on squashing them. He wasn't really sure what to do with them once squashed so I encoruaged him to "tidy" them in to the bowl.  Some people may feel uneasy giving a 15 month old a knife, even a blunt one, but Daniel did really well and enjoyed copying his big sister.

Daniel with the knife.

Enjoying the stickiness of the cherries.

Counting cake cases.

With the cakes safely in the oven we started to think about decorating, which is where we ran in to one of the most complicated maths problems Beth has ever come across; how many cherries do we need to make 12 half cherries? I left her to think about this and she decided that she could count each cherry twice. I suggested she could count in twos, and demonstrated by counting 2,4,6,8,10,12, but she decided she would rather just count them in ones twice.

We made some cherry flavour icing and decorated with the half cherries. Beth asked what flavour the cake mixture was and I told her vanilla. Beth then volunteered the information that vanilla came from flowers. I told her that I thought it was a type of flower called an orchid and we could look it up if she liked, "on Google?" she asked, but was more interested in the next batch of cakes coming out.

 *We previously make biscuits all together, Daniel ate a large amount of the dough, but as it didn't have raw egg in I wasn't worried. In fact if you have a very mouth centred baby biscuit dough can make a very good substitute for play dough, especially if like Daniel they aren't deterred by the salty taste. Often when Daniel was little he would use some of the ingredients for sensory play.