The Betty Crocker New Junior Cookbook

 My mom dug up Stacey's old cookbook from when she was a kid this winter.  E looks at the title and laughs, "New Junior Cookbook...not so new anymore!"  Well, she's been pouring over the recipes for a few months.  She really wanted to try out some recipes.

Well, last week, we had some frosting leftover from an activity from the week before...and since we didn't have any graham crackers, I said that we needed to make a cake.  E ran right over to her cookbook and looked up a recipe for a yellow cake.

 She excitedly read me all the ingredients and necessary supplies.  As we had them all, I agreed to the project.

E declared that all bakers needed aprons and outfitted the boys accordingly.  Everyone wanted a job.  X fetched the supplies.  He helped measure out ingredients and he held the mixing bowl...although, he did try to run the mixer.

E tried running the show.  She measured ingredients.  Returned supplies to the cupboard, but her main job was running the mixer.  She thought that she was big stuff as she used the mixer.

C ran around generally causing havoc.  But, he was such a cute little baker that I couldn't really be annoyed with his antics.  I can't really remember how he was helpful, but I do know that he was there 'helping' the entire time.  Sampling the batter was his favorite part!


But, truthfully, who doesn't like sampling their work?!  All three loved taste testing their cake.

Jut was at work when the baking occurred.  He was due home while the cake was baking.  They were watching the cake bake, but decided that they wanted to surprise Dad at dinner with a cake.   So, they posted a guard at the window watching for him so that they could turn off the oven light and 'hide' the cake.  I did burst their bubble a little by pointing out that his sense of smell would give 'away' the surprise.  They were funny.  It was hilarious.

Once the cake was cooled, they had fun decorating it.  We did sequester C for that activity...thankfully Jut was home by that point in time.  E decided to decorate it as an American flag.  She did most of the decorating...but she did *reluctantly* allow X to do a few of the stripes.  They did a pretty good job for their first attempt at decorating a cake.

Once it finally came time to eat the cake, everyone's frosting disappeared first, but the kids ate all the cake too.  However, they didn't really keep asking for it...it was a fairly dense, heavy cake.  Reminded me exactly how it tasted 20+ years ago when my sister and I would make the same recipe.  Fun times and fun memories.