AIBU to ask if you bake with your children

[Leavingsosoon]

And if so, why?

I've recently joined Facebook. I was on it ages ago, came off and now on again as am trying to meet people and so on.

My friends have nearly all got photos of baking with their children up there.

Explain why this is part of childhood! I don't understand ...

I think I had a bit of amnesia as although I learned to cook at school, I remember nothing. I made pineapple upside down cake once, that was lovely!

but then I can't cook and don't find it very interesting TBH OP this is why I cook and bake with my DC. Not being able to cook means that eating well and cheaply is really tough. We cook from scratch and so despite being on a really tight food budget (£60 a wk for 5 of us) we manage to eat really well all the time. :)

I hate baking and I've never done it with my DD, though we do plenty of other creative activities. I don't mind cooking generally but it's never occurred to me to involve her (she's just 5). So: I share the OP's bemusement.

I have come up with a great idea to bond and chat with DD involving cake.

Coffee shops.

I'm just helping the local economy

I bake with my boys - lots of reasons. The maths, food science, fine motor skills and reading all come into it, but it's also something I love doing and it's time we can spend together talking about anything and everything.

We started off with them standing on the kitchen steps so they could reach the work surface - DS1 at 9 is almost tall enough not to need them now, DS2 at 7 still uses them - and making simple cakes. The recipe for a basic sponge is straightforward, they are fairly difficult to get disastrously wrong, they take a very short amount of time to cook and you can watch them rising in the oven, they can be messily decorated and still look at taste fab - so it's like reasonably fast gratification for not much effort :) We then extended that to more complicated cakes and biscuits, and from there to every day cooking.

Now the boys will often help me make dinner - they can make a reasonable cheese sauce, a range of breakfast type stuff, bolognaise sauce, pizza (although I do make the tomato sauce topping as a batch every now and again so they just have to make the dough, spread it over and sprinkle cheese and basil on!) - I'd like them to be self sufficient when they leave home without relying on fat and salt laden processed ready meals.

I also really don't mind all the mess. It all gets cleaned up at the end and it's fun for them to play in a sink full of hot soapy water while things are in the oven. Floors can be mopped, surfaces wiped, pans in dishwasher, kettle on :)

I don't tend to post pics on FB of it though, not sure what the benefit of a photo of a pizza is! I post the birthday cake pics every year for family (they live a long way away so they get to see the cakes that way) - mostly when I post pics of the boys it's them doing something sporty or when we go for walks because the scenery where we live is stunning.

I don't have children but I'm going to be baking with my nieces this week. I have very fond memories of baking with my grandmother, taking home butterfly buns and biscuits. I had this vision of the girls having lovely childhood memories of their auntie making delicious cakes and them going home full and happy. In reality, it'll probably be a disaster - there will be tears, tantrums and shouting and that will just be me. Really, it's just a way to spend time with them and have some fun and make them feel useful and like they've helped me. When I asked them if they'd like to help me bake they were very enthusiastic so we'll see.

I don't now, but al mine started banking with me or dh by about 15-18 months-as soon as they were old enough to stand on the steps to the kitchen surfaces.

I don't bake now as they are 14, 11 and 8yo and do it on their own with occasional help with ovens or difficult bits. Even the 8yo makes a good jam tart or chocolate cake.
However the kitchen looks like a bomb went off in the flour bin at the end.

I used to when I had 1, now with 2 still at home I don't have the time.

Banking

Yes, my 24 year old and I will be making the Xmas pudding together,

Both mine adored baking from a very early age -

Yes, for loads of reasons, one of them that I love it but also because there are so many things you can learn from household activities:

• Weighing and measuring - as well as helping to identify numbers, we do very basic addition (I've got one egg, we need three, can you count the rest for me?)
• Mixing colours - I mix all my icing myself and we only use primary colours so that we can see how to make up the secondary colours
• Reading a recipe - works on reading skills as well as memory
• Science - what does the bicarb do, what makes plain flour and self raising different, why are we using oil instead of butter etc
• Gross and fine motor skills - squeezing lemon juice, grating carrots etc
• As well as to encourage artistic flair, motivation and pride in achievements
• IT'S FUN (and messy and kids love it!)

I make this sound like a boring school lesson but learning doesn't have to be from a school book. It can be found every day.

Ihavebrillo, my kids have been helping with cooking since they were wee too, not just baking. They have the safe knives from pampered chef and have been peeling and cutting vegetables since they were at nursery.

Yes I think it's import ds learns to cook

What usually happens is ds will really really want to cook cake/cheese straws/crumble weigh ingredients start mixing them then use the whisk or wooden spoon as a machine gun complete with gun noises remembers his Lego figures need to get in on the action wonders off to get Lego comes back with a enough lego to cover kitchen counter sets up Lego battle forgets that he is making a cake/crumble/cheese straws and by now his arm is hurting too much lost interest to mix anything so I finish it off

Then ds takes the credit

He managed to stay interested long enough to make flapjacks