I’ve been meaning to do a bit more “makey-do” stuff with Harry so when I was out shopping and spotted The Good Dinosaur Cake Packet Mix, it was a complete no-brainer what our next mum and son activity was going to be. The Good Dinosaur was the first film that we took Harry to see and we all loved it. He has books, plastic figures and the DVD of it. I knew that our first cake making experience was going to be a winner.  The only question was “how much mess were we going to make?”.

He spotted the box before going up to bed and so I made a promise to him that we would bake them the next day.  When morning came his first words to me were “we make Arlo cakes now Mummy”.  He clearly hadn’t forgotten. So by 7am the oven was warming up, I had cleared us a safe space in the kitchen, and I had ripped open the top of the box. A promise is a promise.

He proved to be a very helpful bakers assistant. He helped me every step along the way; instructing me to stir things a bit more when needed, he put out the cases and told me how much mixture to put in them. He was very enthusiastic about cleaning up afterwards albeit that consisted of licking the spoons clean. He was the perfect Paul Hollywood to my Mary Berry.

Trying to explain the different stages to him proved quite a challenge.  H could not understand that you had to wait for the oven to heat up, they then had to be cooked, they then had to cool down, and then you had to wait for the icing to set. And only then were they ready to be eaten!  For a little boy who had waited 12 hours to sample his own cakes he did really well not to throw a complete wobbler.

For someone who last cooked destroyed a packet mix cake nearly 30 years ago in Home Economics they didn’t turn out too bad.  Harry announced that he was “humby” and so I let him have one. When he showed me his belly and declared it was still empty I let him have one more. When Daddy came downstairs later that morning I was proudly showing him the cakes when I realised that the numbers in front of me didn’t stack up. We made 10, he had eaten 2 and there were 6 left……

Harry’s cheeky little smile – and swift exit – told me all I needed to know!

Love

Harry’s Honest Mummy