Nanny Adventures : Baking with a Three Year Old .

So Baking is always an adventure with me to begin with, mostly because I can be a little , but baking with a three year old assistant just adds more fun.  One of the things I love most about being a nanny is getting to spend individual time with each of the kiddos. So yesterday I took time with the older of the boys to bake a cake.  He was so excited when I told him I was going to let him take his nap later and he was going to get to help me bake a cake.  So we set out to bake a Lemon Pound Cake.

We talked about how important it is to wash our hands before we start baking and what we were going to make. Any fun activity can be a learning opportunity.  We talked about the shape of the butter and where butter comes from, try explaining to a 3 year old that butter comes from milk which comes from cows.... because apparently butter comes from the grocery store :) 

Let's just say I didn't even attempt to explain what crisco was or where it came from.... 

Thank goodness for my kitchen aid mixer because I was able to have my hands free to help in unwrapping the butter and he Crisco, and to catch the Crisco when it slipped out of his hands before it hit the floor.   Then we added the sugar, I apparently wasn't strong enough to open the lid, so He tried.  When he wasn't strong enough we tried the rubber glove approach and that worked.  Then he didn't understand why the one cup measuring cup would not fit in the sugar container so we ended up having to use a soup spoon to fill up the measuring cup ... we needed 3 cups of sugar so the Crisco and the butter were very blended by the time we added the sugar.

I added the eggs... just thought that was safer if we were going to give this cake to anyone... Lemon Pound cake with shell pieces doesn't sound too appetizing to me.

We added each egg one by one and watched it stir and mix.

Then we sifted the flower... This got a little messy ... We both looked a little like ghosts before we were done.

We added the flower a little bit at a time with a spoon and some milk.... I handled that as well as the flavorings... he was intrigued by the two sizes of  measuring spoons... :) and then we watched it mix and mix and mix. At this point it was nap time which meant I had an hour and 15 minutes to clean  up ... :) and it took almost the entire time.  He was so excited after nap time about taking out the cake.  We cut pieces for his family and my family and talked about sharing with others and how it makes them happy.