Family bonding is a piece of cake

Big Sis A Loving Mother

Mini cupcakes are awesome when you have a toddler. You do not need to crack your brains to think about what to offer him as snack, and you have control over how much he eats, receiving no screaming just because you have given him only half of the cake.

Today was a Saturday where I was home alone with my two-year-old as dear Hub SH was working. I decided to let my Cherie Ethan experience something new at home. We were going to bake mini cupcakes!!

I have always been longing to baking cakes or cookies with my daughter (if I were to have one) in my kitchen one day. But hey, it could also be fun to do it with my dear son! So we were going to experience the FUN then!

Let me introduce to you our ingredients today. I chose a very simple recipe since my helper aka trouble-maker is only a 2-year-old. So simple means good :p

Ingredients:

125g soft unsalted butter (take out from fridge and place at room temp for it to become soft)

125g castor sugar (you can reduce the amount if you prefer something lighter for kids)

2 medium eggs

125g sifted plain flour, sieve in 1/2 tsp baking soda and 2 tsps baking powder

3 tbsps fresh milk

Things you need:

Oven, mixer, weighing scale and paper cups (I bought the cups which are 3cm in diameter at the bottom and 6cm in diameter at the top from Daiso)

To do:

1) Prepare all the ingredients based on the amount needed.

2) Preheat the oven to 200degC.

3) Pour everything to the mixer and blitz until smooth. You can do this in such sequence: butter, caster sugar, eggs, flour, milk.

(You should get the mixture as in picture 3 at the end of the day.)

4) Divide the mixture into all cupcake papers, filling 2/3 up the cups.

5) Bake in oven for 10mins (bake longer if your cups are bigger). They should have risen and be golden on top. You want a little peak if possible.

6) Let them cool a little.

7) Sit back and enjoy!! Easy right?

I let Ethan choose the cups he liked and he chose the pink one (as expected)!

That's Ethan helping to distribute the paper cups on the metal tray.

He looked expert in scooping the mixture into the cup in this picture.

But, in fact he was creating a mess for me. Note that the above filled cups were actually done by me. Haha.... So, I assigned this little "helper" another job, that's to throw the used tissue to the dustbin. He's good at this!

Ethan requested me to place the filled cups once again on the floor to let him have a look before I placed them into the preheated oven. As you can see, we could make 2 dozens of cupcakes here with the amount stated above.

Ethan was curious about the cupcakes being baked inside the oven and was observing and waiting patiently in front of the oven. (I was beside him to prevent him from touching the hot furnace)

Side track a bit...

Annabel Karmel, is the influential author of 14 best-selling books on nutrition and cooking for babies, children and families. She believes the key to bonding with children is to treat them as equals and friends, as opposed to establishing a parent/teacher relationship with them. 

I agree to her recommendations of choosing recipes that are easy enough for the kids to make without too much help from grown-ups, as they love to be part of the adult world. Furthermore, as children have short attention spans baking mixes or simple mixes make the process simple, with no over complicated measurements. The social function of baking teaches children a sense of independence and achievement. It is the perfect way to be creative and have fun at home, which will in turn bring us closer together as a family.

Tick, tock, tick, tock .... while Ethan was playing in the living room with his toys, the mini cupcakes were done.

Look at them, didn't they look yummy and beautiful? Don't forget that these are the masterpiece of mummy & son!

Me: Darling, the cupcakes are done!

Ethan: ......

(ok, maybe he just had his milk and showed no interest to cupcakes)

1 minute later...

Ethan: Mummy, eat cake, eat cake.

(Wow, this proved that the cupcakes were still in his mind)

Wah.....This is the cake mummy and I baked...So amazing!

It tastes GOOOOOD!!!!

Please do comment and share with me if you have other simple and nice recipe :)

A day in the S.E.A.

Big Sis A Loving Mother

I always try to let Cherie Ethan have a little touch with the Nature's lovely creations like the animals and the greens. Living in the hustle and bustle in city Singapore, I always believe we should have all the city ways of doing so. 

That's why Hub SH (first time appearing here, my hubby) and I always try to bring him to parks, the zoo, bird park etc.

S.E.A. was one of our most recent trips.

Sea? No. It's the SEA Aquarium in RWS, Resorts World Sentosa Singapore :) 

See how beautiful SEA is!!!

Cherie Ethan was very excited seeing the colourful fishes and sharks!

It was a great time for him pointing out all the different colours that he'd learnt from his books, this time on these moving living creatures: Gin (Green), Oran-chhhh (Orange), Boo (Blue), Yennow (Yellow)...

We also tried to touch the star fish, while Cherie Ethan kept mumbling "star star" "star star"...

He didn't quite get attracted by the jelly fishes, but he did keep calling these "ball ball" "ball ball" (I wonder why a kid always has to double the word that he says... haha...):

And we saw these very beautiful and elegant jelly fishes. Cherie Ethan was very much amazed! And so were Hub SH and myself!!!

I must say, it's really quite mind-relaxing looking at these wonderful sea creatures:

We also saw this very cute, spiky thingy which I loved very much :)

By the time we reached this big aquarium which accommodated this super giant stingray-like fish, Cherie Ethan started to feel very sleepy and was getting to fall asleep already. There he started to become uneasy and request to leave the place. 

Well... Darling... You've missed this very moving and shocking scene of the swimming giant escorted by all the little fish.

Although the trip ended a bit abruptly, it was a very wonderful and full-of-learning-fun trip. We just gotta plan our time better next time!

See you SEA!

SEA Ticket Fares

1-Day Pass

Adult (Age 13-59) $29

Child (Age 4-12) $20

Senior (Age 60 & Above) $20

We bought 1-Day Passes. Cherie Ethan's entry of course was free :)

If your Cherie likes Barney too!

Big Sis A Loving Mother

What's your Cherie's favourite cartoon character?

I wonder whether it would easily be BARNEY too!

* Although a big 'monsta-like' purple dinosaur may not be as appealing to mummies... * -.-||

It's a usual Friday. While I was thinking what to do with my boy today, I came across the ad from the Wednesday copy of My Paper which I kept inside my bag, advertising the live musical shows of the characters from "The Little Big Club". These are my boy's favourite cartoon characters!

Me: 'Darling, do you want to go and meet the Barney?'

* Ethan nodded his head, and quickly ran towards the door and pointed at his shoes. *

Me: "Ok... Let's go for the 2pm show then."

It's rather abrupt I know, but don't we just need a little bit of abruptness to spike up our lives sometimes? Ha...

It's only about 12:30pm when we reached United Square. 1.5 hours earlier, but there were already people queuing up for the show! One queue was to claim for the "Meet & Greet Barney & Friends" photo pass and the other is to queue to enter the show.

It's about 10-20 families each queue, could be considered short?

To qualify for the photo pass, we need to spend $40 in a single same-day retail receipt in United Square. So I decided to buy a tin of milk powder (my boy's been taking Enfagrow A+ Stage 3) from the Cold Storage and claimed for the photo pass.

After getting the photo pass for my boy, we then queued up to enter the show. It was stated that only 40 families were allowed to enter for the show but I thought the staff did not really control the numbers since the queue did not stop growing until the show time.

We were within the 40 families, and very luckily, Ethan was cooperative enough during the waiting time that he chose to fall asleep inside the pram.

Guess the waiting time! My! It's 1.5 hours! Just for my Cherie to meet his favourite purple dinosaur. Ha...

We're seated on the carpeted floor in front of the stage.

"Fireman Sam" was the first to come on stage! Look at Ethan, supporting his head with his index finger under his chin while watching the show......

Followed by "Angelina Ballerina" which Ethan calls it "NANA".

All kids yelled for Barney when Barney & friends came on stage!

He concentrated so much on the show. Seemed like I had made a right decision to come!

As usual, Barney ended with "We are Happy Family" song before all characters came on stage again to say good bye to all their little fans! The whole musical show lasted for about 45 mins and ended with pop-up ribbons! Woohoo~ Nice!

After that, we moved to queue up (again!!!) for the "Meet & Greet Barney & Friends". Fortunately the queue moved quite fast...

Not a bad photo huh? But hey, where were Ethan and I looking at (distracted by one of the staff who was trying to get Ethan to smile at the camera)?

Though it's not a perfect picture taken, we did enjoy ourselves during the show despite the 1.5-hour waiting time. And it's the first time for Ethan to kiss a real BJ's cheek!

We were only allowed to take one picture with one camera by the way and that explained why the queue moved so fast?

If you would like to go for the show, the show will last until next Mon 17 Dec 2012. Do visit United Square Facebook page for details.

By the way, no food and drink is allowed, so you may want to make sure your little one is full before the show.