In this post, I’m participating in Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays, Tuesdays at the Table, Tuesday Night Supper Club, and Hearth ‘n Soul.

This is the third recipe the kids have made themselves and this one turned out the best yet! They’re really getting into it and embracing the concept of testing out every recipe in the book. It’s nice to see them working together and I’ve been impressed with their kitchen skills so far. Thumbs up for the So Very Domestic wee ones! 😉

Scones – from Baking With Kids (p. 13)

First mix the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Then cut up the butter into small pieces and plunk them in. Use your hands to crumble the butter into the flour mixture until it looks like small crumbs.

Now, crack your egg into a measuring cup and add just enough milk to make 2/3 cup total. Then make a well in your dry mixture and add almost all of your milk + egg liquid.

Use a butter knife to mix the liquid in, until it becomes a soft dough. If you need to, add more of your liquid bit by bit.

Once it looks right, plunk it on a lightly floured counter and knead it. Here, even Wee One #3 got into it! So cute!!!

After both kids had a turn really kneading it, they pounded it down a bit and flattened it out so cut their scones from the dough. Wee One #1 chose a standard circle cutter, and naturally, Wee One #2 chose a ‘princess flower’.

Into the oven they went for 11 minutes at 425! Tah-daaaah!

They honestly were as good as they looked. Wee One #1 tried one with butter, then once he knew he loved it he had another with Nutella! Wee One #2 stuck with her raspberry jam, and the littlest one had a small piece of each!

Fun and simple recipe for kids. Again, all I did was turn the oven on and off and put in and take out the cookie sheet!

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This is the kids’ second recipe from this book so far this year and they’re having a fun time with it. Wee One #1 has been helping in the kitchen since he was old enough to push a chair up to the counter and mix so he has lots of practice. Wee One #2 has been baking for about as long, but is 5 years younger.

Anyhoo, they’ve both helped bake all kinds of neat things, but they’ve never made plain old bread before, so here we go, on their second recipe all by themselves – they made bread!

Basic Bread – from Baking With Kids (p. 58)
5 cups white or whole wheat bread flour (or 2 1/2 cups each)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 cups lukewarm water or milk

First they added the flour and the salt and the yeast (we used half white and half whole wheat flour). Then I put the hook attachment on the mixer and they poured in the warmish milk.

Taking the bread out of the mixer to get messy and knead it on the counter was the highlight of today’s bread baking session! They really got into it.

Then we covered it with a sort of damp towel and put the bowl on the oven (we turned the oven on super low to give a little heat to the room and bottom of the bowl), and then we waited about an hour.

Once the hour was up and the dough had done it’s thing, they took it out again and punched it down (as per the hilarious instruction).

Wee One #2, who is my official pan-butterizer, set to greasing the pans. She’s pretty serious about it. If she happens to come into the kitchen when I’m baking without her (like say first thing in the morning and she’s barely awake) she mortally offended I’d butter my own pans.

They decided that instead of baking a single 1lb loaf, they wanted to each have their own loaf. Which, of course, changes the baking time and the final look, but they were in charge of this kitchen venture, so two 1/2lb loaves it was.

You know what? Their loaves came out terrifically! They were obviously on the short side, lol, but very, very good! This is a great recipe for anyone to make bread for the first time.

This house feels like the perfect house for kids to cook and bake in because one of the counters is really low! My Kitchen Aid lives there for easy access. 😉

This recipe kicks off our year of baking through Baking With Kids. I guess I should say ‘their year’ of baking though this book. I have promised to be there for any and all things the cookbook tells them must be done by an adult, but otherwise it’s totally their thing.

Wee One #1 started with the very first recipe in the book, Apple Crumble Muffins.

Apple Crumble Muffins – from Baking With Kids (p. 10)

First, make the crust by mixing all of the topping ingredients together. Set that aside to sprinkle on later.

Then sift your flour into the mixing bowl, add sugar and mix with a wooden spoon. Grate the lemon zest (being careful to avoid the white pith), mix in and make a well in the middle of the ingredients. Melt the butter (either in the microwave or stovetop) and pour into the well. Then break the eggs into a small bowl and mix them with a fork till they’re broken up. Add the eggs and milk to the well and mix with a wooden spoon. Or in our case….

…mix with a wooden spoon until it becomes really tricky, and then turn to the trusty Kitchen Aid!

Once all the ingredients are combined, spoon the batter into your paper muffin cup lined tray. Using all of the batter, and almost filling the cups, you will have 12 good-sized muffins.

Now, chop up the apples and sprinkle the pieces over the batter. We left the skin on for a little burst of fiber, and we had about half an apple’s worth of pieces left over.

Now, on top of the apple pieces, sprinkle the topping mixture you made earlier! He tried a spoon, but soon realized that clean hands were much, much easier to sprinkle with!

Now bake them at 375 for about 30 minutes. These were done in 20, in my crazy supernova oven. 😉

I helped just the brown sugar and the baking powder, and that was only because my containers are a little tricky to get into. This entire recipe was done by my 10 year old – aside of course from putting in and taking out the pan from the oven. He even poked a tested into the muffins to check if they were fulled baked!

The topping burnt a little, as you can see, but I think in hindsight the topping should go in a little later through the baking. Other than that, this recipe was good! The muffins are dense, and 2/3 the kids didn’t love them, but Wee One #3 loves them!

1 recipe down, 52 to go!

There is so much going on here for the blog I hardly know where to start. Tomorrow is my first proper post of the year but I thought I’d outline a little of what I’m cooking up!

With my Uncle Bob passing last spring, my Granny last summer and then our big move in the fall, Cake Year 2010 did not go down as I had hoped. The official count for 2010 was 45 different cakes or cupcakes, but I did not do as well as Pie Year 2009 – when I made 57 different pies or tarts. Now that we’re settled into our new house and I’ve gotten comfortable in my new kitchen, I’m taking on two cookbooks, one with the kids help, and declaring 2011 to be Cookie Year. All of my long distance friends just got really excited because they know I’ll totally mail cookies.

I’m also going to make a separate gallery for my handmades because I knit more socks than I can keep track of!!

The first cookbook I’ll be baking from with the kids, the oldest two anyway. It’s called Baking With Kids and I’ll supervise them baking one thing from it every week – there are 53 recipes so we’ll double up one week. They’re really excited about this so I’m super looking forward to it!

Last year for Christmas my dear friend Brigitte got me Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, the cookbook about hiding veggies in unusual places (like french toast and brownies). I’d see it on my counter and flip through it and think about cooking from it and now it’s been a year! This year, my aunt got me the next book, Double Delicious!: Good, Simple Food for Busy, Complicated Lives and getting this second book was the kick in the butt I needed to really get into the first one! I’ll be making something from Deceptively Delicious slightly more often than once a week. Thankfully my husband is on board to try out these new recipes! He is getting a lot more adventurous in the kitchen (ever since I really mastered some recipes he’s been asking me to figure out), so that’s a win for us as a team for sure!

My adorable friend Sammie has asked me to help her pull together a little DIY cookbook for a good friend of hers who has had gestational diabetes in the past and is blessed with another wee one on the way! Good thinking on her part, to be proactive about it before it becomes a problem!

Between these two books, Cookie Year 2011, our light on the sugar project and all the random seasonal and holiday themed baking that is sure to fill in the gaps, this promises to be a busy year for my kitchen and I could not possibly be more excited!

I’ll leave you with that as I made a mad dash to my kitchen to get baking!!

04. January 27 – Baked Alaska

03. January 18 – Scones

02. January 13 – Basic Bread

01. January 3 – Apple Crumble Muffins