Design your own cup cake! - Cooking with Small People! -

The second instalment in my cooking with kids adventure...


My slightly older class (6-7 yr olds) get an hour for their cooking. They also have experience as they spent most of last year cooking very simple things, so I try to make their sessions more challenging.

I have given them a cookbook each which they stick the recipe in, writing any changes they made, and then they photograph their own food to stick in with the recipe. (training for tomorrows food bloggers!)

They made cup cakes this time. 
I made a basic mix with them (based on Nigella Lawson's Fairy Cake recipe in "How to Eat".)


Basic Cup Cake Mix
125g Self Raising Flour
125g unsalted butter (very soft)
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tspn vanilla extract
1 tspn baking powder
few tablespoons milk


Put all ingredients except milk in food processor and blitz.
Add the milk and continue to process until you have a smooth batter.


Divide into 4 bowls - one for each child.

Then I had a range of things they could choose to add:-

Cocoa powder

Lemon zest and juice

Sultanas

Oats

Orange zest and juice

Dessicated coconut

Mashed banana

Grated apple

Food colouring

I asked them to talk to me as they added things so I could help with quantities and whether we needed to tweek the mix a bit e.g. if they added a few liquids I added a little more flour.

The kids then stirred their mixtures and spooned it into 4 patty pans. (I had different coloured patty pan cases so that we could tell who's was who's.)

 

We then cooked the cakes for about 15 minutes at 200C.

Whilst the cakes cooked (and cooled fast in the freezer) the kids did a bit of the clean-up, wrote their modifications onto their recipes and coloured/flavoured their icing.

The Icing - Butter cream icing

• 185g butter, softened
• 2 1/4 cups icing sugar mixture
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 
  
• Using an electric mixer, beat butter in a bowl until pale. 
• Gradually add icing sugar mixture and milk, beating constantly until combined.

Kids were offered a drop of colouring, a squeeze of lemon or a little cocoa in their icing and sprinkles, fresh strawberries or glace cherries for the top. 

They then iced and decorated. They chose their favourite of their 4 and took 
a photo of it. Then they scoffed them down or wrapped them to take home or some of each!

 

One group went with the 'I want everything she has' approach and we ended up with lots of similar cakes with almost everything in them. 
The second group were more restrained. We had plain chocolate, orange and chocolate, lemon and vanilla. 
The third group were more adventurous. One made a lemon and soy sauce cupcake!!!!! One made a fruit salad one with lemon, orange, banana and apple. This group also put colouring in the cake ( the others just put it in the icing)

 

This activity ran overtime for every group (allow about 1 hr 20 min) but none of them minded, they enjoyed it so much they were happy to stay in and finish, with the lure of 4 mini-cupcakes each at the end.


I have done something along these lines with my family too. With much older kids it is still a fun activity and you end up with more appetising results.

Nicola