5 before 40: Bake a Cake with Sophia

Just before I was 30, I wrote a blog called 40 before 40 and one thing I wanted to do was bake a cake with Sophia. It has been a long time since I added to this blog series and I’m actually behind by about 4. But I couldn’t have such a happy afternoon with my girl and not post about it this evening.

Baking is a bit of a long lost love for me. I’ve always been interested in it and I got into the habit of baking when we were in Formby. But then I became a Vicar and a Mum and it kind of fell by the wayside.

When it came to the birthday cakes, I made up with the ‘birthday cake shopping’ game where Sophia would choose between different cakes until we finally had a winner, and that’s the one we bought. Although I didn’t have time to bake, it was still out thing.

Last year, on my mat leave, I baked both kids birthday cakes and, with some encouragement from another clergy Mum, resolved to always make them from here on in. Sophia was delighted! She even asked me to make extra cakes for her party. And she was even more delighted when the stars aligned and we ended up with the time and space to make her birthday cake together this afternoon.

We began and Sophia wanted to be involved in every single step. She helped grease the tins, pour in the coco, turn on the mixer, add the flour, sugar, butter and milk (but not the eggs). She was disappointed only to be able to add 1 teaspoon of baking soda and quite fancied adding a second!

I’m glad I waited until now because she was just about able to stay engaged the whole time (apart from the oven bit when she did paining at the kitchen table – who can blame her?)

We’ve gone for chocolate with lots of sprinkles. Sophia broke up the chocolate and very carefully stirred in the cream for the icing.

It was coming up to tea time when we were decorating and everything was still a bit warm, bit we wanted to get it done. We spread filling on the bottom cake and decided to add extra chunks of chocolate from the fridge. We then moved to decorating the top with sprinkles galore, all Sophia’s work!

But then… disaster struck. I tried to move the whole thing from the cooling rack onto a plate. And suddenly, a huge gash appeared right down the middle of the cake… two!

So what do you do? You fill the cracks with more chocolate and sprinkles, of course! Then you put it in the fridge to set and hope for the best.