There is a mess on my counter: a mixture of flour, sugar, and sprinkles-the remnants of what is currently being mixed in the stainless steel bowl in front of us. Specks of butter are on our fingertips, chocolate smeared in tiny palms. My little ones are at my hip and feet, respectively, as we wait for the dough to be ready to scoop onto well-loved baking sheets. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t always the tastiest of treats. This is baking with littles.
It started when my eldest turned a year old as a way to include him when I was in the kitchen. Baking is in my lifeblood, something that was passed from my Granny to my Momma and from my Momma to me. It is something that relaxes me, almost a form of meditation. I wanted this to be true of my own children as well, and so I decided to simply start. For me, it was a way to create a core memory not only for my kids but for myself as well.
Here’s the thing: social media has a way of making it seem as though baking with little ones is this magical experience…and sometimes it isn’t. Yes, there are these amazing breakthrough moments where I can feel the magic, and I know that my child will remember this.
Most times, though? It is chaos.
Every week, we bake on Thursdays. There are no negotiations, no rainchecks. Usually, chocolate chip sprinkle cookies are made, but sometimes, every once in a while, I can convince my now four-year-old to make something else with me. We don’t do fancy things. There are not any long and involved baked goods with littles. But there are math lessons and reading opportunities mixed with plenty of batter tasting. We have these conversations about Mario Brothers and about his friends at school. I know that these moments are fleeting.
But, no matter how many times we do this, it is still messy. The recipe does not change. I still get frustrated when my son wants to do it “myself” and decides that we need the whole tub of sprinkles in a single batch. I still want to make the scoops of cookie dough perfectly spherical so that they create that bakery look once baked. It is still chaos every time we put on our aprons, even more so now with our one-year-old second child underfoot. There are weeks where there isn’t a morsel of magic to be found, the intention simply on baking for the sake of baking. There have been a handful of Thursdays where I didn’t want to bake, but my son did…and so we baked.
And maybe that’s the magic? Baking with littles forces me to embrace the mess, lean in, and just soak in every crumb.
