Baking with small children

Warning - what you are about to read may be alarming to some readers. If the title of this post is causing shortness of breath, sweating palms, and feelings of faintness please stop reading now.

First of all, baking with small children (plural) is not something I advocate. Baking with A small child (singular), is something that can be a fun and bonding activity. This said, as a mother of small children (plural) and a lover of baking, the two do occasionally coincide. This is generally not premeditated on my part. This morning was a typical example. My children were either sleeping (baby), or playing quietly. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to sneakily and ever-so-quietly, mix up a pumpkin loaf. Alas, midway through my first egg crack the first small child had pulled up her stool. Somewhere around her loud 'I do!' The second small child pulled up a stool. Past experience and the tips I am about to share with you kept the chaos to a painful minimum until today's bowl licking fiasco.

Haley's Tips for Baking with Small Children:

1) Make sure you're well-rested. Now, if you are the mother of the small children this is likely not the case, which leads us to Tip 1a) Sleep-deprived mothers should not proceed until coffee has been brewed.

2) Ensure that you are able to create multiple jobs for multiple children. The difficulty is that you want to make each task sound enticing, without going overboard thereby causing coveting over said task.

For example:

Task 1: stirring
Task 2: dumping in measured ingredients.

These tasks need to be delivered as quickly as possible - Immediately after Task 1 has been presented to child 1, just as child 2 begins to protest their lack of task, Task 2 needs to be presented (while child 1 is still immersed in their task and is hopefully oblivious to the enthusiasm you are injecting into Task 2).

3) Never let small children measure out the ingredients. If this precedent has been erroneously set it will be difficult to break. If you have already made this mistake and are weighing the pros and cons of letting your child measure vs a temper tantrum - I would take the temper tantrum. Short-term pain over the long-term benefits of not finding sugar grains stuck to your slippers for months. Do let your child dump the already measured ingredients into the bowl. Yes there will be some spillage, but that brings us to the next tip-

4) You need to be mentally ready for mess. An egg on the floor, flour tracks, and stray chocolate chips will not be as difficult emotionally if you expect them.

5) Similar to tip 4, mentally ready yourself for the inevitable melt-downs. Have your nearest time-out areas allocated (I use the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen). Use pessimism to your advantage, it will allow you to be pleasantly surprised when things don't go as side-ways as expected.

6) Expect dough-snitching and spoon licking. Baking with small children is not the time to worry about salmonella, (yes I have recently recovered from salmonella, please note that it was from a restaurant and not from consuming raw cookie dough - I can feel your cyber-cynicism as I type). If the final product is to be consumed by non-family members, for your good conscience they should be warned that this was baked with small children.

5) Have a second 'licking spoon' at the ready. No, this is not to lick your children with. This spoon is to be dipped into the dough/batter and speedily produced as the baking concludes, so that your children can slobber in unison.

6) Finally, when the baking gets out of the oven you will need to hand out the obligatory taste test and then you want to get the rest out of the way FAST, a tray on the counter only leads to full-out cookie binging, tantrums, and thievery. I stash my finished products in the laundry room or garage until fully cool and then package them when the 'helpers' are sleeping.

7) Cartoon time, you earned it, and it's going to take a full episode of Dora to get your kitchen back in order.