I’ve wanted to bake for ages but having a 9-month-old means limited time. I’ve always looked forward to Christmas baking, and when Theodore is old enough, I look forward to baking with him properly. For now, I will be baking and he can help me decorate!
Christmas Baking means wonderful little treats you can enjoy throughout the day whilst you are looking after your children and if they are old enough you can even share it with them.
Christmas Cupcakes
I was never very good at cupcakes, for some reason I am much better at big cakes. However, I’ve not made cupcakes in more than 2 years and wanted to just make a basic vanilla cupcake for us to ice.
Ingredients:
- 110g butter, softened
- 110g golden caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 110g self-raising flour
- 1-2 tbsp milk, plus a little extra for the icing
Ingredients for buttercream:
I use Peppermint extract to make peppermint icing which was so good! You hardly need any drops for the flavour to come through, I found the extract on Amazon and it’s made in the UK. Combine this with butter and icing sugar until dense enough to ice the cakes.
Peppermint icing just completely reminds me of Christmas it’s such a winter flavour to me, other Christmas baking options to try could be cinnamon or chocolate buttercream.
Theo and I had so much fun icing the cakes, I held the bag whilst he squeezed the icing out and directed where it went. He found this so fun I got the sprinkles out so he could use them to decorate too.
Christmas sugar cookies
As I didn’t have any cookie cutters I also got these from Amazon which worked really well and I enjoy trying out different shapes for us to decorate. Biscuits are something that I enjoy doing all year round and so to make them different I bought fondant icing and food colouring so it was much quicker to decorate them.
I’m not a professional baker, however, I have made these biscuits several times now so I don’t tend to look at the recipe as much. Using fondant icing made me enjoy being able to do it with my son as it meant he could use the rolling pin and he had lots of fun creating the colours.
Baking is actually really good fun with a little one and it can be highly educational:
- Cracking an egg – Can teach them to be gentle
- learn the names of the ingredients
- We talked about the colours and how each colour has a name when he was picking up the bottles.
- He used motor skills with the rolling pin
Christmas baking doesn’t have to be a work of art, when we were finished the kitchen was piled high with things to be washed up and the icing was not what I was picturing, however, we both had loads of fun decorating and baking together.
Christmas baking made us feel festive and made me relax after a busy morning of swimming it was just what we needed!