Baking with toddlers - attempting the pistachio cake

Today, given it's a day of rest, Isobel and I decided to do some baking. We tried to recreate the pistachio cake from the other day. Found a few recipes online which varied quite a lot but we decided to use polenta in addition to flour and used two sites as the main basis (for info, the two main sites which used polenta were this Australian one and this Franco-Irish kitchen one).

The whole process was another lesson learning opportunity for things to watch for when baking with toddlers (although it might just be baking with Isobel!).  I will share these but here goes the recipe and some photos of the process:

1. Mix 50g plain flour, 50g polenta, 1tsp baking powder with 200g of ground pistachios (this gave me a great opportunity to use a new bit of my lovely Kenwood - the multimill - Isobel however found the noise 'scary mummy')

2.     Melt 100g of butter and add 120 ml olive oil.

3.     Whisk together 3 medium eggs and 200g caster sugar until fluffy (and if a toddler, stick your fingers in and eat as much as possible while mummy isn't looking!)

4.     Then add the olive oil/butter mix and whisk, and finally the pistachio/flour etc mix.  Whisk it all together.  Eat a bit more.  Then add zest and juice of one large lemon (we used a lemon that was too small so the flavour could be a bit stronger) and some orange if you like.

5.     Pour into a greased and floured tin (23 cm diameter gives a good depth cake) and bake in 160 degrees for 40 - 45 minutes until it comes away from the side but is still moist in the middle.

6.     Let it cool and dust with icing sugar.  Eat.

We all had a slice when Peter got home - and it was yummy so would strongly recommend it even if you have to watch for toddler fingers!  Don't you think it looks just like the one in the pub picture?

So what further lessons did I learn about baking with Isobel apart from the obvious things like not letting her near the oven and keeping sharp objects out of reach? Well, firstly she likes raw egg, and raw flour, raw sugar, raw polenta, raw anything really.  She should probably be quite ill! Secondly, she loves pressing the button on the electric scales - so you move rapidly from g to oz and back again and then all of a sudden all weights disappear and you're back to zero! So no accurate measuring.  Thirdly, the accurate measuring is made even harder as she goes on to 'test' the recipe straight from the bowl, especially lumps of butter.  And my last lesson learning from this baking session is that she tries very hard to fall off the chair she is balanced on by jumping up and down with excitement shouting 'ready, it's ready' when the beeper goes off on the oven!

All in all a good day.  Topped off with my first run in ages - slow but steady.  Role on the 10k next year (!>!)