Cooking with Kids

Here we are on week three, following Mother's Hen's, Sally-Mae Cooks, on spending quality time cooking with your children.  You can click the above link, or you can use her button on my side bar to check out what Sally-Mae has made this week.
First, I'd like to say that it's possible that I told a story last week.  This week's post was not done before this afternoon (although the actual cooking was done by 10:30), and this week's recipe is DEFINITELY not good for you (unless you count it as chocolate thereapy - which I fully intend to do!).  But...we've had a very busy week, and I was at meltdown stage this morning, so I asked Ri to help Beenie do the cooking with kids today (it's good practice for her anyway!).  The first thing she asked was, "Can I cook anything I want?", and the answer, of course, was yes.  So we have Ri helping Beenie making Pioneer Woman's, Best Chocolate  Sheet Cake. Ever.  Ri loves trying out her recipes, and I have to admit, we've only tried one that we did not care for.
So here goes:

Mixing together the flour, sugar, and salt.

Melting the butter.

Adding the cocoa.  The water is boiling in

the background.

Blending in the boiling water.

Adding the cocoa mixture to the dry ingredients.

Mixing together the other wet ingredients,

and the baking soda.

Beating everything together - Beenie took

this picture.

Ri held the bowl while Beenie scraped the

batter into the pan.  Bree got this pic.

Ready to go in the oven.  They used a 10"x15",

jelly-roll pan.  There was a little batter left

over, but the other pans looked like they

would be too large or too small.

Adding powdered sugar to the melted butter

and cocoa in the pan.  Hmm-the begining of

the icing and the cake sound very similar-maybe

that's why this is so very nummy!

Chocolately goodness!!

They didn't know what else to put it on, and I

suggested a cookie sheet. I should have

clarified which one - this one is a lot little

beat up. Also, the cake stuck some in the

middle, but when you finish pouring the

icing over the top, it's much harder to tell

what it looked like. Besides, IT WAS

DELICIOUS!!!, and that's all that counts.

We ate it warm-all I can say is Ahhhhhh!!

We just had to go ahead and give it a try (even though it was 10:30am).  It was for science.  We NEEDED to make sure that it's rough landing out of the pan didn't, in any way, compromise the taste.  It didn't.

You're supposed to mix pecans in the icing, but since some of my children only eat nuts raw (NEVER mixed in ANYTHING-I hope they grow out of that), we just chopped some and sprinkled them on top, for the ones that wanted them.

If you want the recipe, you can click on the link above for the Pioneer Woman's website (trust me, you want this recipe), and I urge you to check out Sally-Mae's site too.  It's good to encourage our little cooks in the making.

The reason I didn't write out the recipe this time, is because the post was already getting long, and I wanted to take a little space to glorify God and His work in our lives.  I was very tired and run down this morning, since this week has been full of new adjustments.  God, of course, knew all of this in advance.  Our church encourages families to meet with one another during the week (they're called Koinonia Meals), and the family that decided to host us this week offered to bring us a meal instead, since they knew this week was going to be very busy for us.  It was a such a blessing.  The mom stopped by this morning, and because of an unexpected gap in the flow of people that have been, and for the next few days, will continue to be in and out of our house, we were able to sit down with her for quite a while; getting to know a little more about each other, which is the whole purpose for these fellowship times anyway.  It brought a lift to my day that was very much needed, and the added benefit of having something already prepared for supper tonight (in a dish that we won't have to wash and return-Yay!).  We were able to share this wonderful cake with her too.

God blesses us abundantly, and I'm so very thankful.

Becky