And so began the idea for making half of a cake for Ari’s half birthday.
Several weeks ago, I floated the idea of half of a cake to Ari. He told me he wanted chocolate cake (doable), cream cheese icing (doable), and it should be a drip cake (WHAAAAAAT?!?!?). After a momentary panic, I reached out to my next-door neighbor, who has fabulous decorating skills, and asked her for help. She suggested a chocolate ganache drip cake. After going down the Google rabbit hole for chocolate ganache drip cakes, I settled on a recipe. I considered buying a turntable, but landed up only purchasing a squeeze bottle instead.
Whisking eggs and sugar while still in pajamas.By 7:31 a.m., the cake was in the oven.A 10-minute cool was necessary before removing the cake from the springform pan.It took me longer than expected to get the cake out of the springform pan. Eventually, I got the cake out in tact so it could cool on a wire rack for 90 minutes while the homeschool day began. (Yeah, we started late because, well, I’m human.)By 10 a.m., Isabelle was readng and Ari and I were making cream cheese frosting.Once the crumbcoat was applied, Ari sampled some of the frosting. (It’s really good.)Ari asked to decorate the cake with the ganache. And so he did. He was a little heavy handed.We had a TON of leftover ganache. I was preoccupied with an appointment that began at 12:45 p.m. that I completely lost sight of the fact that we were supposed to cover the top of the cake with the rest of the ganache. Alas, it’s down the drain now so the finished cake looks like this. It looks like it was made by someone who is 5.5 years old, doesn’t it? (I think it’s perfect.)
We will celebrate tonight with buttermilk-brined roast chicken, green beans, and french fries. (Ari is hit-or-miss with green beans, but the rest was requested.) Then, we’ll devour half of a cake in honor of Ari’s half birthday. I cannot wait!
Head over to Two Writing Teachers for more slice of life stories.
Ari’s half-birthday is approaching so I’m going to be baking a half-of-a-cake cake with him. Thing is, his half birthday falls during the week so in-between homeschooling, trying to get work done, and writing, I’ll be baking a cake tomorrow. Knowing this is going to make for a TIGHT day, I thought it would be a good idea to have all of the ingredients — except for the ones that require refrigeration — laid out on the counter tonight.
Thing is, the mise-en-place-the-night-before idea came to me while I was cooking dinner — a new recipe — this evening. Therefore, I couldn’t read off the list of ingredients to Ari, who knows where most things are kept in the kitchen. Even if he cannot read the ingredient names, he knows the difference between even more obscure ingredients, such as the look of the regular cocoa powder and my dutched cocoa powder. What he doesn’t know, by sight, is the difference between bittersweet and semisweet chocolate bars.
Isabelle knows where nearly none of the ingredients or baking tools are kept. BUT, she can read! So, I enlisted her help to read through the ingredient list to Ari so he could gather everything up and place it on the counter. They were quite the pair!
She read while he searched!They had some trouble locating the baking powder since someone (probably me) put it back in a slightly different spot than I usually do.
Everything is ready to go, waiting for us, for the morning. I cannot believe I’m going to start baking at 7 a.m. (Because our homeschool day starts at 8:00!), but that’s the plan… as of now.
Isabelle helped me locate the pot needed for tonight’s recipe.
I turned to Lori, my next door neighbor, who is my food and cooking mentor, recently when preparing dinner was becoming a difficult task. Isabelle no longer wanted to play by herself, watch “Sesame Street,” or read her books while I prepared dinner. Instead, she wanted to be with me. But not just with me. She wanted 100% of my attention. (That’s kinda hard when you’re doing anything more than hitting the reheat button on the microwave.) Therefore, I turned to Lori for some guidance.
“Are you getting her involved in the cooking?” she asked.
“Yes, but it’s hard. She just wants to be held,” I replied.
“Have you tried putting her in her high chair so she can see what you’re doing?” Lori asked me.
“I have, but she doesn’t want to be in there…” I said hopelessly.
Lori gave me some additional ideas, but I filed away the high chair one in my head to try again.
My mom was with us last week, which happened to coincide with Isabelle having a fever for four days straight. (And then she got diagnosed with an ear infection.) Therefore, my mom was around and more than willing to entertain Isabelle while I prepared dinner. Tonight was my first night without someone around during dinner prep time. I hoped for the best, but expected the worst.
I placed the recipes on the counter to determine what I’d make first. Once I decided to start on the chicken, someone came running into the kitchen and she was not happy. Isabelle threw her arms around my legs and latched on. But I didn’t take the bait.
“Do you want to help mama make dinner?” I said in as upbeat of a voice as possible. “Here, why don’t you sit in your high chair while I finish cutting the tomatoes.”
I placed Isabelle in her high chair. She sat and watched me cut the tomatoes. I handed her a lemon. She held it, rolling it between her hands. She sniffed the sage when I handed her the bunch. This is going well, I thought. But then, I handed her the tarragon. Maybe she didn’t like the texture or maybe she didn’t like the licorice smell, but she wanted no part of the tarragon. In fact, she wanted no part of sitting in her high chair anymore. She had to come out.
Once the chicken was prepared it came time to work on the creamed spinach. Rather than getting right to work, I sat down on the kitchen floor and reached my arms out to Isabelle who was crying. “What’s wrong, Baba?” (That’s a silly little nickname I call her because ba-ba is the first sound she babbled.) She crawled into my lap and stopped crying. “Let’s read the recipe together.”
I began reading the creamed spinach recipe, which like the rest of tonight’s dinner, was new to me. She sat in my lap with rapt attention. I read the recipe to her as if it were a picture book, emphasizing words, pointing to things we needed to focus on, etc. Immediately after I finished reading, we discussed. We talked pots and pans. The two of us immediately went to work searching for the just-right pots for the recipe. We reread the recipe making sure we had the right ones. That took a good few minutes.
But, when it came time to put the pots on the stove to get cooking, Isabelle got cranky again. She wanted to be close to mama. This time I grabbed her booster seat, which was still attached to a dining room chair from last Friday night’s Shabbat dinner, and brought it into the kitchen. I sat her in the booster and tried to amuse her as I filled the large pot with water and put the spinach inside of it. Again, that lasted a couple of minutes. Then, she had to get down from the booster and the clingy-thing started again.
Somehow, I managed to get dinner made. I think it was thanks, in part, to my husband who intentionally came home from work 45 minutes earlier than usual since he knew dinner might be challenging this week.
Even though Isabelle isn’t ready to work through a recipe yet, I think it’s good that she was interested in it. I’m hoping this is an early sign that she’ll enjoy cooking with me… someday. Until then, I’m just glad she enjoyed the chicken. That, in and of itself, makes me happy.
If you’re a parent who has a suggestion for me about how to make dinner prep more seamless, then please let me know. (Please note: I’m really tired of using the slow cooker!) All out-of-the-box suggestions to help us get through this phase, which I know will pass, would be appreciated!
Raising Literate Humans 