Child Friendly Parent : Gingerbread

I always wanted to be one of those parents who was going to cook with their child and not care about mess or fuss, you know the type, they laugh when batter hits the ceiling - everything is Ok for that parent.

If you know me, then you know that I was never going to be that parent. Never. I cook all the time with Gabe, I let him hold the eggs for a second. I let him mix the ingredients, heavily supervised, and I let him put the paper cupcake patty things in the tray. Then I rearrange them so that the colours are evenly dispersed.

Today I decided to be the other parent. The one that laughs at food related mess and doesn't bat an eyelid at rampant disarray. That's right people, I decided to be Fun Mummy. Fun Mummy chose gingerbread - lots of kid related activity in that - and lets face it, what's nicer then tastefully decorated gingerbread. Nothing, that's what. Nothing.

Gabe, enjoying some Fun Mummy largesse. 

The first thing about Fun Mummy (FM) is that she doesn't mind if you position your chair right in the middle of everything, she knows that in order for fun to be had you need to be in the thick of it. So FM doesn't mind one bit, she just works around you.

The Gingerbread Recipe
5 cups of FUN (you can add more if you like)
350g of plain flour
1 tsp bicarb
2 tsp ground ginger
100g butter
175g brown sugar
4 Tbsp golden syrup
1 egg, beaten and utterly broken, until there is no fight left.
Preheat oven to 190c and set yourself up with some trays and baking paper. 

Innocent butter and dry goods mix..

1. Mix the flour, bicarb and ginger and then rub the butter in till it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Did you wash your hands Gabe?

Gabe helped with this step, because I was FM and I didn't have a care in the world. Normally Regular Mummy (RM) prefers to do the butter rubbing type actions herself, because we want that shit mixed well, but not today, where was RM? Nowhere to be found!

He was having a great time, and testament to the kind of  anal retentive I am, he kept saying "I'm not making mess Mummy". Little did he know that  Regular Mummy wasn't in the house and that Fun Mummy was totes cool with mess. Fun Mummy encourages that, she knows that children's creativity shouldn't be bound by the iron structures of adult hang ups - like cleanliness.

2. Stir in the sugar and then beat the egg with the syrup and stir that in. It will slowly come together, like the Beatles song, and you'll have a big sticky ball. You may even have it in your hair.

Fun Mummy loves Gingerbread mix in her hair, it makes her look like she's involved. I kept hoping that someone would knock on the door, some poor student who wanted me to change my gas provider, and then I could answer it laughing with a smudge of flour on my nose and batter in my hair and make a madcap face and say breathlessly "We're cooking, he's having so much fun!", and then Gabe would laugh, in that adorable way that indicated that he really was having the time of his life.

Flour the surface well, I really can't emphasise that enough.

3. Take a portion of the dough, say half, and then roll it out to a 5mm thickness. Realise that it's stuck to the bench and turn into Regular Mummy and crack it for a moment. Remember yourself and laugh and make your madcap face (try not to scare child with the madcap face) and then FLOUR THE MF SURFACE WELL. I mean it. Every time you roll that sucker and turn it over - flour and flour again.

I let Gabe roll for a bit, but even I, as Fun Mummy,  can't stand to watch too much inept rolling and so I placated him with choosing the cookie cutters.

No sense of relationship or structure at all. 

By the time we got to this stage I was sick of being Fun Mummy - and Gabe was in full cookie cutter mode. I particularly dislike the small tree cutter and he was on a freaking mission to reforest the bench top with tiny trees. In the end we had a "discussion" which ended with a "threat" and then a "capitulation". I explained that it was very hard to decorate the tiny trees, and to think about how much MORE fun it would be to decorate the BIG gingy man! Anyway the result is above a sort of pictorial melange. We made quite a few and then cooked them up.

They are easy to burn and overcook, they are extra good when you hit that perfect moment where they are slightly brown and puffed. That way when they cool they are soft inside and cooked on the outside. I think that we succeeded in making one tray like that - and we made four trays.

The last thing that Fun Mummy was present for was the decorating - I am in charge of the icing and Gabe is in charge of sticking things on the gingerbread and in his mouth.

Happy and Myopic!

Angry about that red thing on my tummy!

Ultimately they were delicious and fun and a cool thing to do. Sadly things finished in an out and out fight when Regular Mummy returned precisely at clean up and was a total Nazi bitch. So yeah. But still.