Simple Christmas Baking with a Toddler

Monkey loves helping to cook at the moment. He loves putting his pinny and on and it is generally Daddy who he helps in the kitchen while I am looking after Little Miss. They have done all sorts, Monkey is learning to peel and chop vegetables and he is fascinated by “fire” (the hob) though he knows to stay well back from it, and the oven. He just wants to “have a look see!”

chef

We are really encouraging this as it is getting him so involved with foods and helping with his fussy eating. Plus he and Daddy have a lot of fun cooking and baking together. At the weekend we decided that they could do some christmas themed baking. Someone had bought us some Christmas themed silicone baking tins last year and we got them out to have a bake.

They stuck to our favourite, simple sponge cake recipe – with one variation. Because I can’t eat dairy at the moment (Little Miss seems to have a hopefully temporary lactose intolerance, reacting badly if I have even the tiniest amount of milk or cheese) we used dairy free spread Pure Sunflower spread. This is’;t a sponsored post or anything but this worked really well so I thought it was worth mentioning. There was a slightly different taste to our normal sponge but I don’t think you would notice unless you knew, if that makes sense? So it was lovely and we now have a recipe for a dairy-free cake!

So anyway here is the recipe we used. Β This is enough for a small sponge cake, and was the perfect amount for our 4 silicone cake tins.

Dairy Free Sponge Cake Recipe

4oz Self-Raising Flour
1tsp baking powder
4oz Pure Dairy Free Margarine (or Stork/Butter)
4oz Caster Sugar
2 Large eggs
2-3 drops vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 170ΒΊ

Put all of the ingredients in a bowl and whisk with an electric whisk, until smooth and light. In these tins we cooked for 20 mins, It should be golden and bounce back if gently pressed in the middle.

Yup it’s that simple! Perfect for baking with a toddler and Monkey does love to be involved now, rather than just eating all the ingredients like he used to.

making

Once the cakes had cooled, Monkey and Daddy had fun decorating them with a bit of water icing and some sparkly bits from the baking cupboard. Didn;t they do a fab job?

decorating

They were really tasty and it was so simple to do.

Do your kids like being involved in the kitchen?

Tasty Tuesdays on HonestMum.com
 Festive Friday Blog link party

Family Friday
TamingTwins

27 thoughts on “Simple Christmas Baking with a Toddler

  1. This is great! I have been starting to get my son in the kitchen a little more, in fact I posted about it a few weeks back! We are yet to bake a cake so I will try this with him on the weekend. #letkidsbekids

  2. Monkey looks like he was having a wonderful time helping back the cakes – love how pleased he looks at the finished iced versions which look very yummy. Good tip about using the dairy-free spread to produce a dairy-free sponge too.

  3. These look great. I also have a very fussy eating toddler and try to do baking and cooking with her as much as possible to try and encourage her to try new things. It looks like your little monkey had lots of fun making and decorating these

  4. My kids love helping in the kitchen too and I think it is a great way to help get over fussiness. I find that if they have made something they are far more likely to eat it so it is a win win situation! Love the look of these cakes and glad you have found dairy-free baking easy! You would never know that things are made from magarine rather than butter (on the whole)…

  5. I love the silicone mould idea they look great. I am impressed that you let Monkey peel the veg, I have only just let my 5 year old use the cheese grater unassisted!! let alone the veg peeler, maybe I should ask if she wants to help tonight at tea time, she does lay the table and do a bit of chopping with a table knife though. #letkidsbekids

  6. Yum! This has just reminded me we have some of this trays in the cupboard, I’ll have to get them out!

    Thanks so much for linking up to #ToddlerApprovedTuesday. Don’t forget both me and Leandra are joint hosting this time round and we are keeping the link up open until January 1st so if you have any other amazing posts to share feel free!

  7. The cakes look fab – I love those silicone moulds! Most of our baking is dairy free too, as my husband can’t have dairy – we use the same spread (pure sunflower) in the place of butter and most of the time it works perfectly!

  8. They look great πŸ™‚ I don’t do much baking myself but that sounds like a straightforward enough recipe that even I could manage! I know my little girl would love to do more things like this, it’s a new year’s resolution to involve her more in the kitchen! #tinseltuesdays

  9. They are fab, we’ve been making Christmas biscuits over the past few days-first lot were eaten before they made it to the tree! Love these festive cakes! Thanks for linking up to #tastytuesdays x

  10. Pingback: #TinselTuesdays Number 6. December 16th | Farmer's Wife and Mummy

Thanks for taking the time to write something. I love comments and read every one xx

Your email address will not be published.