Sous-Chef

My love of baking must be contagious since Jackson is my reliable sous-chef. Admittedly, he likes to overstep his boundaries and I have to constantly get on him about washing his hands. I think the main reason he likes baking is because he knows I'll let him lick the spoon, taste the icing, etc. 

I like to find reasons to bake, especially when I get to make whatever I want and share it with others. My favorite reason to bake this week was to make a cake for a close friend's baby shower. I had really lofty goals of a 3-dimensional sailboat (her nursery theme) and checkerboard cake inside. Neither of those worked out due to poor planning, a power outage, and a youth group event taking longer than expected. Still, Jackson and I made a decent cake. Jackson helped dye the fondant, roll it out, and cut out circles.

The next excuse to bake was having our in-laws over for dinner. I always feel obligated to make dessert when we have company over, and I was still on an apple pie kick from earlier in the week. Instead of mini-pies, I made the regular pie. I'm sure I've made a pie before at some point in my life, but this is certainly the first one in several years. I tend to stick to cakes or cookies.

I think the pie tasted better than the cake. Not much is better than warm apple pie and ice cream.

I began letting Jackson help me bake two years ago, when he was 2.5 years old. In fact, the photo below was my TimeHop from yesterday (2 Years Ago).

While I'm proud of Jackson's progress and interest, I realize this means I need to start letting James, Amelia, and Maddie help in the kitchen, too. Three toddlers fighting over measuring cups seems like a recipe for disaster, so I'll try to find a way to give them individual attention. Either way, I've got a lot of sous-chefs to train!