On Chocolate and Learning

My house is filled with that most wonderful of smells, chocolate! We read Karma Wilson's Whopper Cake today and then followed the recipe in the very back of the book. The "Whopper" comes from the main character in the story needing the back of a pickup truck to mix a huge cake for his wife's birthday. Now, our cake fit in an ordinary 9 by 13-inch pan, but gave lots of opportunities for the boys to spoon and mix and bake.

We have one of those Height Right chairs so Samuel can sit and write properly at a grown-up table. This baking exercise proved that the chair is terrific for helping in the kitchen. Both boys could stand on the bottom platform and peer into the pans and bowls.(Although Baby U sometime preferred the "seat" level.) I measured  the ingredients ahead of time, showing them the amounts as we went along. I also told them the basic principles involved in mixing and baking a cake. ("Taste how the buttermilk is sour; it may seem funny in a chocolate cake but it helps to make a cake tender and poofy.")

Later, I went back and reinforced some of the principles in measuring liquids. I used the plainest of my 4-cup liquid measures to cut down on confusing information. I was pleasantly surprised to see Samuel take the one-half cup measures in stride. We were filling from one cup level to the next, and Samuel started correctly reading out the half measures as we passed them: " three-and-a-half cups," and so forth. Wow!