(The sweet end results for the kids at home when little master chefs at home decide to use their free time at home and instead start using their baking skills)
One of the biggest challenges that we as parents have during this pandemic and the schools closed is on keeping our kids occupied with something productive and something new so that they don’t get bored. Otherwise, they will opt for something that is not productive namely watching TV the whole day or on their phones playing games.
(Although this is not the first time we are doing baking at home, this is the first time we decided to put together a ragtag video that captures the key moments when we started baking up some brownies recently)
We decided to have a cooking session where the kids would be actively be involved and they can also learn something on baking as well. I always wanted my kids to pick up some form of cooking skills so that they can wipe up a good dish on their own.
Baking at home, however, meant that we had to get the right “equipment” for baking specifically so we had to make some small investment on the tools, mixture bowls and ingredients for baking.
Allowing the kids to actively involve in the baking also means they will take charge of the whole process. Of course, we are always around to ensure they do follow the steps rights and not rushed to complete the tasks. In the past, we had badly baked cakes when we bypass key steps or did not get the right ingredients.
Baking cakes and cookies have been one of the easier cooking projects done by the kids – although it takes more time on the preparation, it is something that the kids can manage themselves and there is less risk of them handling hot oils & fire. Putting the tray of the cake or cookies mix into an oven to bake is somewhat safer for kids.
A couple of weeks ago, the kids decided to do chocolate brownies based on an easy recipe picked up from Che Nom’s Youtube channel and we got ready the ingredients ready for the kids to take up the baking.
First, we need to get ready the right ingredients all ready before the actual baking starts. For ease of getting everything we need for baking in one place, we opt to get all these ingredients from the nearest baker’s shop.
The obvious thing to do is to filter out a mixture of wheat flour, cocoa powder and a pinch of salt so that we only get only the finest powder in the end for the baking.
This part of the baking where we had to melt chunks of dark chocolate with big chinks of butter till it is fine and well blended was taken up by us, the adults at home as it involves fire and hot water.
Then we had to mix the earlier filtered flour, cocoa powder, salt with 4 well-whipped eggs with the melted chocolate & butter so that we have one grand mixture for us to load into the oven.
Finally, we got these pre-waxed baking papers to pour the final mix before it goes into the oven. We added a layer of butter on the paper before we poured the mix so that it will be easier to cut and remove later.
P.s. I noticed I have a load of videos from my travels but I hardly publish them as I don’t have time to edit them. But with the baking videos of my kids, perhaps it is high time I start picking up some video direction, content management and editing skills and upload them into Youtube. So please do expect some amateurish Youtube videos popping up in this blog to complete the blog posts.