rivettingKateTaylor

Literally. Don’t put your fingers in the mixer.

Lachlan is turning out to be a very good little baker, he has even made up his own chocolate cake recipe (that  actually tastes like chocolate cake).

Now I’m no queen in the kitchen, but I can bake. It takes every ounce of strength not to take over when he’s on the go in there. But he gets out all the ingredients, making sure we have everything he needs (he’s even biked down to the store once to get coconut and milk – 7km return) and gets to it. Mum’s only needed when it’s time to pour out the mixture (it’s heavy and he’s only eight) and turn on the oven (which he’s not allowed to do).

The beeper goes ** minutes later and Mum is required again to take the produce out of the oven.

Unlike my younger days, when cakes were cooled before being iced, we cut the edges off while they’re still hot. We flip the biscuits around on our hands as we take nibbles from them straight out of the oven. We eat two pikelets each with butter melting everywhere while the next lot is cooking.  And there is always, always, at least three biscuits worth of mixture left in the bowl for little fingers to hook into (or big fingers if the owners of the little ones aren’t looking). Actually I remember once my sister Maree and I making Anzac biscuit mixture once and eating the whole lot without making any biscuits! Obviously Mum wasn’t around! My kids remind me of that every now and again –  sooner or later I’m going to have to let them do it!

So why shouldn’t you put your fingers in the mixer? Because it hurts.

Lachlan had a silly moment yesterday, obviously, and stuck one finger on a turning blade. I was alerted to the catastrophe by the distinctly ominous sounding cries (as one would assume from an eight year old boy with four fingers stuck inside pieces of metal where they had no right to be! ( a bit of ice and lots of cuddles, all he has to show for the pain are three little red marks on his fingers – there goes another one of his nine lives…)

The good news is that he will never do it again, of that I am sure. He now knows what happens when you touch an operating beater. There are no more questions to be answered in that regard. Although he did look at me in a panicked way this morning, making pancakes, when I asked him if he wanted to lick the beater! You’re not going to leave them attached to the machine though are you? His emphatic “No!” came with an even more emphatic shake of his head!