Sunday cook-up: 2 activities in 1

In the name of baking a cake quickly to take to a friend's house, whilst still incorporating plenty of steps for Master 22 months to participate in, we love embellishing packet mixes! Not the healthiest option in the world, so let's call it a 'sometimes' food!!

Our favourites:

Date loaf: extra egg, an orange - grated zest, juice, diced orange flesh, extra chopped dried fruits (dates, sultanas, apricots), ?nuts...

Carrot cake: extra egg, extra couple of fresh carrots - grated, handful of sultanas, squeeze of orange

Vanilla: extra egg, plus whatever flavour combination is handy! 

- a handful of blueberries, orange zest, squeeze of orange juice

- grated apple, cinnamon 

- frozen forest berries 

- stone fruits - nectarines, apricots, peaches
- lots and lots of lemon zest (2 lemons) and juice and cinnamon

- banana...

 ... or dividing the mixture into two and colouring one half - with cocoa or a natural food colour, for a marble effect.

And then the activity becomes a '2 in 1'! Whilst watching the cakes rise in the oven, the little chef enjoyed some highchair colouring time, using the cardboard boxes the mixes came in (trying to recycle as discussed in post about saving trees-art paper here) and some chunky crayons! I secured the cardboard to the highchair tray for greater stability, as he is not yet able to stabilise with his non-dominant/ non-writing hand.

I enjoyed noticing the spontaneous use of all crayons in the one hand, the palmar grasp pattern and that he is perhaps favouring the left hand, but still hand swapping (even sometimes drawing with a crayon in each hand!) ...