If you you can’t eat the house, eat the cake.

Sean was upset that he couldn’t eat his gingerbread house when we went to pick it up with his blue ribbon and gift certificate to a local restaurant as a prize.  The gingerbread house display held up decently, but being that it was out in the open in Town Hall for a week, I told him he couldn’t eat it.  It would get him sick.  That’s all I needed to say because when we got home and he got his hands on it somehow, he had a little icicle hanging from his lip as if to say, “look, I’m eating the icicle you told me not to”. I let him keep it and told him it was ok but I was not taking him to the hospital if he got sick from it.

So after that fiasco, I decided to take matters into my own hands and have him make a creation that he could eat.  I had a box of almond flour vanilla cake mix, some tubes of colored icing that had not been used completely; and a cake pan.  Minimal ingredients required mixing and then throw in the pan to bake.

Sean decided to make an Italian flag with his creation.  I helped him outline the sections and he went crazy filling it all in.

He did make us cut it the long way through the circle so that each piece would have all the colors of the flag, red,white and green.  I had s small piece.  The cake was light and gluten free.  It didn’t leave me feeling heavy as I usually so when I have wheat based products.

Now the idea for this creating a product to be able to eat started with the idea for cupcakes.  The box called it a vanilla cupcake mix, and my idea didn’t stray far from that.  Then I started to think more about actually making this project as quick and painless as possible, and I realized I would have to get cupcake papers to line the cups, spray each one, get messy with a spoon measuring them up evenly halfway, and I was getting overwhelmed by the idea of them scrambling to get the ingredients like eggs, oil and water to make this happen.  Mind you, I have limited food time before my calves start hurting me. It’s just something I have to manage and I’ve learned to deal with it like planning better.  If there are any ingredients that don’t have to be refrigerated I will lay them closer to the area I need to do the prepping.  I’m hoping that the pain will go away the stronger I get, because I know that my legs would have crumbled a year ago when I couldn’t stand on my own very long at all without holding on.  I’m talking like a minute was too long.  Now I can accomplish a few steps. I used to have to lean over on the counter. 

i am very thankful that I can cook and bake again although I’m very small planned batches.  And I am especially glad to create memories in the kitchen with my son.  Especially with some of the cool power tools like a hand blender.

I’d say this was one of my most meaningful baking projects yet.  What’s yours?  Leave a comment below!