Chocolate Birthday Cake | Kid Project

I always try to bake and frost a cake whenever family birthdays roll around.  Birthday cakes are always so happily received so I don't mind the time it takes to produce them.  As my little girl has gotten older she's always buzzing around me in our teensy tiny kitchen, wanting to lend a small but messy hand to my culinary endeavors.  Especially around cake baking time.  

So recently, when her daddy's birthday came around, she begged and begged to help with his birthday cake and I thought, why not?  My plan was simple.  Divide the cake batter into three smaller pans, thereby ending up with two cakes for me to stack and frost and one small cake for my daughter to frost all by herself.  That way, I reasoned, my little girl could have fun and we would still have a decent looking birthday cake (mine) to celebrate with.  Little did I expect that my cake effort would pale in comparison to my little girl's cake!

Christmas Sugar Cookies

This year for Christmas we made our first real sugar cookies, my daughter and I.  These Christmas Sugar Cookies were not perfect looking by any means, but looked adorable and tasted really great (not too sweet, just right!).  And most importantly, my little girl had a blast "helping mommy" with the all important task of painting the cookies.   These christmas sugar cookies are a great food project to do with kids because, as I discovered, they will look great no matter how they are painted!

Homemade Playdough

I couldn't resist to throw this playdough recipe into the mix.  After all this playdough that you can make in your own kitchen in 10-15 mins is cooked.  And it totally kicks ass compared to the stuff you pay pretty big bucks to buy:  it's absolutely safe with no weird chemicals, it feels great, it lasts long and you can decide the colors.  If your kid eats it, no problem, it's just very very salty.  

My little girl loves to help me to make the playdough and then we spend long hours making colorful playdoughy cakes and pizzas for all the stuffed critters in the house. (The lil' zebra above is one of her favorites and we are having a birthday party for him.)  So why not try it?  It's so easy and fun and you can save a bundle!

Easter Eggs - Tiny Eggs for Tiny Tots

My little girl's third Easter was coming up and she was very excited about it as she was finally old enough to understand the fuss about colorful Easter Eggs and fluffy Easter Bunnies.  We told her that we would make Easter Eggs together and she was very anxious about that.  

Actually I think we told her this a bit too early, ending up with a month of her asking repeatedly when we were to make the "Easter Eggs" and us having to explain about "time" and "dates" and so on, all of which I am pretty sure she didn't understand.

I had never done any Easter Egging myself, having grown up in a pretty traditional Chinese family.  So I began doing some research and found out all about this business of making your Easter Eggs.  It was, to my relief, easier than I thought it would be.  

For a twist I was inspired at the last minute to use a couple dozen quail eggs instead of the traditional chicken eggs which made for super tiny cute Easter eggs that could, after the spectacle of course, easily be peeled and fed to your tot (my girl loves them!) for dinner, lunch, or whatever.  Plus the natural random speckling of the quail eggs really showed up through the dye and made for uniquely patterned Easter Eggs.