Baking? On a Wednesday?

I am aware that the name of this blog is something of a misnomer: there is sometimes baking, but more often I waffle on about knitting, and when there is baking, it's not often on a Wednesday. So I thought I would redress the balance today, with a baking post on a Wednesday.

The baking itself actually happened last Wednesday when my son requested that we make two things: cupcakes and pizza.

We started with the cupcakes. Basic Hummingbird Bakery chocolate cupcakes. Nothing fancy, pretty straightforward and a great thing to do with a toddler. We decorated them with dolly mixtures, which are fab for decorating cakes, unless you get loads of the jelly ones, which I don't think work with chocolate, but my husband and son both disagree with me, so maybe I'm wrong. For reference my favourites are the single coloured cubes with the slightly hard outsides, so long as the yellow ones are lemon not banana (I hate bananas. Properly hate them.) - Co op own brand ones are perfect. I tried to get my son to put five sweets on each cake as we were taking them to his nursery for a snack time treat, but when I looked at the box on the way in to nursery I did notice that a couple only had four...

 

 

I'm not sure where the pizza suggestion came from; I don't think we've made pizza in well over a year, but it was a good suggestion. I helped my son weigh out all the ingredients, then let him loose on the kneading while I washed up a few bits and pieces. He did a really good job, essentially playing with the dough in the bowl, and eventually it looked smooth rather than sticky. While the dough was rising, I made a basic tomato sauce using passata and basil, then we squished the dough onto a couple of greased baking sheets (I have made the error of not greasing the tray way too many times!) before spreading on the tomato sauce, and decorating the pizza bases with pepperoni, chorizo and mozzarella. 

 

 

The cooked pizzas were delicious. So much better than any shop bought pizza - you can put way more meat on a homemade pizza! This is definitely an activity we will be repeating.