Too soon? I think no!

If I want Rosanna to be a famous pastry chef, win "Top Chef: Just Desserts" and buy us (her parents, who she owes everything) a house with the prize money, well then I think 19 months is not too young to start teaching her the art of baking.

This week I found a cookie recipe that had few ingredients (just four!) so it comes together quickly and with only 2 dirty dishes to show for it (winner!).  This led to my toddler sitting on the kitchen counter, modeling ingredients and confused about why my promise of cookies wasn't panning out.

The recipe actually calls for a spice cake mix, but I stood in the cake mix aisle for 5 minutes scanning and searching to find zero cake mixes labeled "Spice".  So I went with butter pecan instead.  I think in the future I will seek out the spice mix, our cookies didn't get that extra fall boost.

So the first thing to do is combine the mix and the pumpkin.  I let my toddler do this.

Sometimes (as in: for the most part) toddler coordination for keeping batter contained to the bowl is a silly expectation.  Shocking, I know.  I just learned about this today.  The result is battered hands, fingers, knee. 

  

Next up?  The egg.  We (I) stirred that puppy in there good.  Lastly are the chocolate chips.  How exciting!  How distracting!  

Hey, kid!  Try and focus, would ya?

Now the boring part, according to Rosie.  So boring, in fact that her mind wandered to other possibilities for our cookies.  I vetoed that one:

Before offering to do the dishes, yes that really happened, she had a minor melt down over the location of the cookies.  Where were they?  Why weren't we eating them?  Why was I playing this cruel trick?

Then we actually did dishes.  What a gal!

To kill some time and distract her from waiting the tragic 15 minutes, I harassed her a bit.  It's kind of my specialty.  She was insistent with her "No thank you!"s, but I am not so easily put off.

And as a reward for her politeness, cookies!!

These cookies turned out cakey (shocking!) and were pretty good.  I had one and decided that a whole bag of chocolate chips is a bit too much.  Moments later my thoughts manifested before my eyes:

Believe it or not, she didn't touch anything before I got her beautified again.  

Her skills need a bit of honing, but I'm up for the challenge!  Next time, maybe a pie......