Inspiration

Cooking with kids

My younger daughter loves to bake. She loves to watch videos of people baking and decorating. She loves watching kids baking on TV. I indulge her by getting her cookbooks and aprons, and decorating tips, but secretly I kind of dread the implications.

I get mild panic attacks when out of the blue, she plops her latest cookbook in front of me, and says, “hey mom, let’s make this.” Do we have ingredients, equipment, time?! I often feel exhausted before we even begin. But there’s the time when all good parents have to suck it up and actually make good on the follow through. If I’m going to be buying her a cookbook, I guess I better be prepared to actually help her make some goods.

I talked her down from macarons to pretzels. Have you ever made pretzels? Not a drop cookie easy type of thing. But after talking my naysaying hamster brain down, I gave in and said yes to pretzels.

And you know what? Those damn pretzels were amazingly delicious. Soft, salty delicious. Carb-loadingly delicious. I said yes, and I don’t even remember what I pushed out of my “schedule” to make it happen (’cause, you know, pretzels are a process!).  But I do remember the pretzels, and how proud my gal and I were that we made them.