Fun with baking – May 2020

Welcome to the third instalment of our Fun Family Learning posts, written during the covid 2020 pandemic. Our theme this week is baking, as chosen by Dancing Toes. I’m really enjoying collaborating with her as we create these posts. Building relationships with my children has always been a foundation of my home education philosophy. What use is it if they gain the whole world but I lose their hearts? We are very far from perfect and have to work through many issues on a daily basis. As they are not at school, we often have to go through the pain barrier and sort out our differences, as we are in each other’s company so much. But, I do think that home ed has deepened the bonds within our family. I feel blessed beyond words that that our sons in their late teens still want to share their lives with me, and pray that I will be able to navigate girl teen years alongside our beautiful daughters.

All that to say, that it is good to find ways of learning which deepen our family relationships. For ease of reading, my words will be in italics and Dancing Toes’ in normal typeset.

I am going to start with 5 fun facts about food through the ages, then tell you why I love baking.

These are 5 different foods through the ages.

• Honey toast (Middle ages)
• Venison pasty (Tudor)
• Christmas pudding (Victorian)
• Seed cake (Edwardian)
• Girdle scones (War time)

I love baking because I love watching my friends and family eating it. I love decorating it and making it look pretty.

• Melt chocolate then put it in a small nozzle piping bag.
• Get a template of whatever you want as long as it can fit your cake.
• Put grease proof paper on the template.
• Squeeze your chocolate on the lines and make sure it all touches.
• Put it in the fridge; it takes about a minute or two to set.
• When it has set don’t hold it or it will melt.

Make any cake you like. Divide it into two cake tins.

Ice the top of one cake with a mixture of icing sugar and hot water. Then make some butter icing and put it on the other half of the cake. Put some jam on top of the butter icing icing. Stick the two halves of cake together, then put your chocolate decorations on it.

Cooking is a great way to teach science and maths too. Alongside many others we’ve had to be more creative in our bread making and have enjoyed making and eating, soda bread.

We make the buttermilk first, mixing lemon juice into whole milk. It’s fun to watch it curdle. This happens because the citric acid in the lemon juice causes the pH of the milk to decrease; this in turn causes the casein in the milk to precipitate out, and the milk curdles. Chemistry!

It turns into buttermilk.

Kneading dough in this way helps little hands to be strengthened, helping in turn with handwriting skills.

And then the sense of accomplishment when we eat it!

And finally, when all the mess is cleared up, space has been given for any frayed tempers to calm (!), why not take some of the yummy food you’ve made, and a pile of books and enjoy some time reading aloud together. This is one of the highlights of our home ed day.

You may like to check out our latest Mended Teacups Home Ed Podcast for more thoughts about learning together at home.

So, whatever you’re doing this week, I hope and pray you can find some space to enjoy your children, make some memories and deepen your relationships.