My Little Baker

About every six weeks or so, it becomes my turn to make a dessert for the lunch program at Samantha's school.  Even though she does not partake in the lunch program (she only goes to school for half-days), it is something that I enjoy doing.  It was my turn this Friday, so Sophia and I set to work making out usual cupcakes for the students.  (While we can choose to do any dessert, I prefer cupcakes because they are fun to decorate around the corresponding holidays). 

 

The look on her face just cracks me up; she knows just how to make the cupcakes and insists on doing as much of it by herself as she can.

The plan was to decorate the tops of the cupcakes with a bird's nest, complete with malted eggs.  I would have liked some slightly smaller eggs, but we had to make do.

Separating the eggs by color -- a wonderful pre-school activity:

Sophia's personal favorite job is lining all of the trays with cupcake papers:

Mixing the batter to make sure all of it is combined perfectly:

It's important to check the progress frequently.  Usually I opt to just let her look through the door, but she insisted on having a closer look.

While the cupcakes were baking, we used the opportunity to practice a few pre-school activities:

(The pre-school activities are something that Sophia and I work on almost every morning while Sam is at school and Jack is napping.  She is getting so much better with them and often begs me to work on them with her.  I have found that she is very good at association right now (i.e. "Find 'J' for Jack or 'K' for Karen" when she has a whole string of letters to choose from), and struggles with being shown only one letter and asked what it is.  We have plenty of time to work on this before she actually starts school in the Fall, but I am taking advantage of our time together to keep enforcing the ideas early).

Our final masterpieces, all ready to be transported to school tomorrow morning -- yup, someone had to sample the frosting and a malted egg (the proof is on her lips!).