Cookies and Crayons

It’s been a long time since we’ve celebrated Valentine’s Day around here. It just not something Scott and I were into and with it being so close to my birthday, it was easier just to skip it. This year, Dougie found out about it and has been wishing people “Happy Valentine’s Day” for months. Clearly, we would have to do something in recognition of the day.

So, off to Michael’s we went to buy some craft supplies. We decided that we would make some special cupcakes to celebrate. So, one heart shaped pan, some cake mix and some icing later and we were ready!

While the kids were napping, I made the cupcakes. Once they were up, we pulled the learning tower over to the counter so they could decorate cupcakes for Daddy.

Connie went first (please ignore the big bruise, she had a run in with our slide and the slide won)

First, she iced the cupcake

Then I gave her a bowl of sprinkles to decorate, they went directly into her mouth

Good thing she’s cute

A little demo from Mum and she understood. First get the sprinkles

Then sprinkle on the cupcake

A few more sprinkles and the cupcake for Daddy was done

Just need to make sure it tastes okay

After that moderate success, I was ready to give it a try with Dougie.

He showed a bit more skill in the icing department

Until I turned my back for a moment

I took over the icing from there. Once that was done, it was time for sprinkles.

“Dougie, maybe you could use your hand and sprinkle them on.”

A little sprinkling lesson for him too and he understood what he had to do.

Wait wait wait, that is not it!

Hope you had a wonderful Valentine’s Day!

Time for a classic Sharabura family tradition… making Christmas cookies! By this time, Dougie is an old pro at making cookies (heck, he has his own apron!), but this was Connie’s first shot at it. We’re happy to report that the cookies were delicious, nothing burned, and we only had a couple of over-sprinkling incidents (see below). First, we make the dough:

Measuring the lemon extract requires a steady hand:

“How does this thing work anyway?”

Salt — another tricky ingredient:

“Making snow” (also called sifting flour for those not used to baking with Dougie)

“I’m going to eat FIVE cookies!”

“Man, this is hard work…”

“Oh, gee, I’m not sure Daddy… let me taste one more!”

“Umm…. Daddy, I’m not so sure about this stuff…”

“Wait… you mean I can eat this??”

“That’s more like it!”

Then, we put the dough in the fridge for a couple of days (hence the costume changes for those who are paying attention!) Onward to cookie-making!

“I can make just one big cookie, right?”

Making cookies for the Cutie Pie Ranch

“I’ve got seven teeth… I can eat all KINDS of cookies!”

“What, these aren’t toys?”

“We can TOTALLY fit more sprinkles on here….”

If it’s Christmas, we need lots of green, right?

Once the cameras stopped rolling, Dad applied a little bit of sprinkle equalization. The things we do to uphold a family tradition…

We continue to struggle with what sorts of foods Dougie will eat. We decided that perhaps he would be more interested in eating if he helped to prepare the food. We had noticed he was more likely to sample something during the cooking process than when it was just on his plate. So, we enlisted him to help with the latest meal.

This particular meal is Jamie Oliver’s Sizzling beef with scallions and black bean sauce. Dougie loved helping toss the meat and adding things to the bowl. Since it was raw meat, he couldn’t really taste it as we went along though. When it came time to eat, he didn’t want to eat it at all.

Guess we’re back to the drawing board for ideas – but at least he learned some cooking skills.

This weekend, we decided to try gluten free baking. I knew we had to get there but I was more than a little intimidated because all the flours were so different from what I was used to. It happened that we decided to participate in a Breakfast Challenge to “Stop the Boring Breakfasts” as well so we decided to mix the two goals and made banana bread (the fact that we had a bunch of aging bananas help in this decision as well).

I am not quite ready to adjust our existing recipes so Grandma Cajka’s banana bread will have to wait. We found a new banana bread recipe instead: Gluten Free Banana Bread. Admittedly, it wasn’t nearly as good as Grandma Cajka’s but it fit the bill.

Dougie mashes the bananas

Adding more ingredients

More stirring

The batter was VERY liquidy. We also made a small adjustment based on the recipe reviews to add an extra teaspoon of baking powder. It definitely helped the bread not fall too much once it was out of the oven.

Finished bread

All in all, I would call this a success. Our baking powder was a bit old and didn’t get mixed in as well as it should have but otherwise, I’d make this again.