Baking with kids...

Let's just say it was an experience. An adorable one, but kind of a disaster.

I had been missing my weekly routine of baking chocolate chip cookie and decided that a rainy Tuesday afternoon was the perfect time for my first baking excursion in Paris. I told Hector and Alexis the plan and they were ecstatic, way more than I thought they would be, which should have been a sign.

I set out all the ingredients, but could not find any measuring utensils or vanilla extract (they use vanilla sugar powder a lot here). No worries, I thought, I'll eyeball it. We also had to use spreadable butter and a chocolate bar in lieu of stick butter and chocolate chips:

The boys took this project extremely seriously, claiming who poured, measured and spooned what. Cracking the eggs was the ultimate prize, and luckily I had two, otherwise there would have been a war. 

I explained that we had to be very careful about measuring everything, otherwise the cookies might explode (had to elaborate a bit to get them to listen). Yet, as soon as I turned my back, Alexis dumped piles of sugar into the bowl...and it went downhill from there:

Hector cracked the egg (and shells) into the bowl and I had to fish them out because he was extremely disgusted by the consistency of the yolk. 

Alexis and Hector battled over who would stir the mixture, knocking half the flour out of the bowl. 

Alexis dipped his finger into the salt, baking soda and flour mixture and almost spit up everything back into the bowl. He did this a few more times, even after I told him that it would still be disgusting after the first time. 

The highlights:

Alexis face when he tasted cookie dough for the first time: 

Then Alexis kept eating the chocolate out of the dough. Alexis' face when I told him he had to stop:

When asked what music we should listen to, Hector enthusiastically shouted, "ROCK AND ROLL." So we jammed out to the likes of Kings of Leon, Robyn, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Train, Jay Z, and The Killers. Hector surprisingly knew most of the beats and broke it down on the kitchen floor. 

The cookie dough was incredible. A dessert in itself, thanks to the immense amount of brown sugar and chocolate bar pieces. I should have just left it at that and not even bothered putting it in the oven. 

The boys loved baking. We had a wonderful rainy afternoon dancing and cooking and they begged to do it again. Little did I know we would have to, since the cookies (if you could call them that) were an ultimate failure. 

They were sugar bricks. Thin, rock hard, and basically just baked brown sugar and butter. I threw out the entire batch, after breaking a sweat trying to break the welded rock mess into individual cookies. However, as a chocolate chip cookie connoisseur I couldn't end on that note, particularly since the boys were not the biggest fans. So we baked them again on Friday and they were delicious... except this time I learned my lesson and pre-measured everything into individual ziplock bags. Somehow they still fought over these. Oh baking with kids...

Alexis measuring brown sugar before giving up and dumping in the whole thing

Hector scooping up some sugar

Hector took over photography duties

Boys mixing

Dough and chocolate bars

Alexis sneaking cookie dough

 Final product