When your Mum's a baker

When our family was thrown into a two-week period of isolation over the school holidays, this baker Mum promised her three kids that they could each bake and decorate their own cakes. Just mini ones mind but that's more than enough when there's no one to share it with. So, Raphy (left) chose caramel, Denny (middle) chose vanilla and Noah (right) chose chose chocolate because he's a boy after his Mama's heart. With my supervision I worked with them one at a time to measure out their ingredients and bake their cakes. For the older ones this translated into a great opportunity for reading and a bit of maths too as we opted to whip up just a quarter of each recipe. We used Rosie Madaschi's recipes from her amazing book Baking Happiness so I won't share them here but I urge you to order a copy for yourself 'cause her recipes are fabulous. Each kid also drew out his or her design for their cake, taking inspiration from their current toy obsession, favourite movies and colours. Denny helped her little sister. I gave them access to my collection of silicone molds and they each chose the ones they wanted to use for their creations.

Denny's LOL cake

I did help with piping the letters onto the front because my girl wanted to make sure her ideas came out exactly as she'd envisaged. Her vanilla mini features the classic LOL colours of pink and teal which Denny coloured herself with Colour Mill Candy and Americolor turquoise. She opted to use my mini donut mold to create some pink and blue flowers and finished off her creation with some of her LOL dolls and accessories.

Noah's Jumanji cake

Noah had recently been introduced to the Jumanji movies, original and modern so his cake naturally took on a wild theme. Think camo, animals and jungle chic. He decorated his chocolate mini with little chocolate bears in natural chocolate and black, along with some paw prints and mini chocolate blocks in yellow. I had to really quell my control freak instincts and let him have complete creative control and I love how it reflects his fabulous little character.

Raphy's Pink Rainbow cake

My littlest love chose the same colours as her big sister along with some chocolate rainbows and sprinkles. I helped her put her caramel mini together and she had great fun spooning the buttercream onto my spatula... team work makes the dream work.