A week or so ago, I was lucky enough to get Kelsey Nixon‘s new recipe book. I even got to meet her and make some of her recipes with a small group of awesome people. Sweetest lady ever and, oh my, she has some awesome recipes in this book.

I love being in the kitchen with my kids. Whether its making toast or a fancy dinner, I let my girls experience food. The textures, flavors, colors and aromas are useful tools. I love that they can experiment and be creative.

My girls and I were flipping through her book and they saw the picture of her “birthday cake” recipe. A birthday doesn’t have to be an excuse to bake a cake, right? So yesterday, when the snow was falling and it was too cold to go anywhere, we baked a cake…from scratch. It was delicious.

Also, I am a photographer at heart, and who doesn’t like a post with pictures?
So here you go…my girls and I baking a cake, in pictures.
We used pink sea salt, because that was all I had in my cupboard and I had to grind it too.
These are my little 5 year olds hands mixing the dry ingredients. This could have ended in a huge mess all over the table, but she gets bored easily and wanted to do the next step.
Mix the wet ingredients together before you add the dry. My 10 year old is pretty good at cracking an egg.

In the summer of 2012, my oldest daughter and I made enough vanilla to last us a lifetime. Easiest thing ever to make and great use of old root beer bottles. Add your dry ingredients and, easy peasy, you have your cake batter.
this cake is a bit more dense and reminded me of corm bread batter.

bake. cool. frost. Kelsey has a recipe for frosting too. I don’t recommend adding salt if you are using salted butter…I wouldn’t know from experience or anything…
This frosting is thick and covers pretty well.
I have girls. Girls love pink sprinkles. “We have to have pink sprinkles on our cake,” said the 5 year old. You can find the measuring spoons here.
Pink sprinkles we did have and a lot of them. A. Lot. But it made the cake pretty.
And it was pretty tasty. We gave it a thumbs up. My girls keep picking at it with a fork, so it doesn’t look so appetizing anymore.
I really like the photos in this cookbook. I also can’t wait to try some of the recipes that I can use the 40 lbs of Zaycon chicken I just got this past weekend. I plan to post more recipes.

*I am in no way being compensated for this post or for promoting Kelsey Nixon’s new cookbook, although she has some fantastic recipes in there. I do recommend getting in the kitchen and making memories with your family.

If you have any ideas or products you think we would like to try, please feel free to email me at [email protected]