Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

cooking with kids

Saturday smiles: birthday edition

Now that I have your attention … welcome to the birthday edition of Saturday Smiles. It’s been a great two days. Here are some of the highlights.

This is my cake. Boston Cream Pie. Homemade. From scratch. By my husband.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute. I mean, he used cake flour and everything to bake the cake, and he made pudding from scratch. I am so impressed. By the way it was tasty. Isabelle even licked her plate. I didn’t get a picture of that.

We do have a picture of this.

Flattering, I know. What’s funnier is after all that effort I appear to be putting in to blowing out ONE candle on the cake, it remained lit. I was too far away. Or so my husband said. I leaned in and gave it another try. Nevermind that our son nearly blew it out before the family started singing. Good thing there was only one candle and not significantly more.

I commissioned my own homemade cards from the kids yesterday. They used “project paper” — Corban’s term for construction paper — and scissors and pens. Isabelle cut and folded. Corban stuck stickers on and scribbled. I was not allowed to be in the room while they worked but I did hear Isabelle composing her messages out loud. It sounded something like this:

“Dear Mommy, I love you as much as you love me. You make me sooooo happy. Love, Izzy and Corban.”

Heart melted? Check.

Later her cards contained messages of concern: “Who will help you celebrate your party? Who will say ‘happy birthday’?”

Though it was a small, private party, I did receive lots of love in the mail and from a couple of visitors who dropped by with gifts and cards. It’s nice to be remembered on your birthday.

By sheer coincidence, I got to share my birthday with the entirety of the kids’ storytime group. The theme was birthdays, and when the leader asked if anyone had a birthday recently, Isabelle piped up: “My mommy does!” I think one of the cutest things was another little 4-year-old girl telling me “Happy Birthday.” The kids made “cakes” out of homemade modeling dough for the craft. They brought it home and haven’t stopped making cakes.

Corban can be very serious about his art. He was singing “Happy birthday” until I turned the video camera on. (Of course.)

Today, we went to a book sale at the library and came home with a box full of books and a good deal on the HBO World War II series DVD of “The Pacific.”

One of the best things about birthdays in the Bartelt family is getting to choose all your meals for the day and having someone else prepare them. At least, it’s the best for me. Even though I like to cook, I appreciate a break now and then.

We started the day with these yummy yogurt parfaits and eggs Benedict. The kids were happy to help with the fruit and granola.

Pay no attention to the girl licking her fingers while dishing out the yogurt. It was a mess and it was totally worth it. We may not be too many years from the kids making breakfast. I offered to let Isabelle make me coffee but she wasn’t interested. She’s watched me do it enough times, she probably could.

These were the things that made me smile most this week, in addition to my husband finishing his seminary coursework. We’re one week from graduation. (Can you guess what I’ll be smiling about next week?)

Here are a few more smile moments from the week, in picture form.

Both kids got new bike helmets this week, Isabelle because she needed one and Corban because he may not necessarily need it yet but he likes to do what his sister does. He loved the helmet so much, he wore it around the house. Reading can be dangerous, I guess, so make sure you wear a helmet!

And the kids have taken a liking to marching with sticks. Phil and I agree: they remind us of Hobbits. I hope no one mistakes our house for an on-location filming of any Hobbit-related movies.

Thanks for reading! I hope your smiles are as big as the supermoon I’m seeing out my window right now!

The trouble with secret family recipes

Maybe “secret” is the wrong word. Closely guarded. Unpublished. Passed down.

Whatever you call it, it poses a problem. Especially for someone who married into the family and lives 700 miles away from the motherland.

We were on our own for Thanksgiving this year, and by “on our own” I mean totally on our own. The past three years, since we’ve lived in Pennsylvania, we’ve done the shopping and the planning, but we’ve had family in to help with the actual cooking part.

This year, it was mostly me, a 3-year-old and a 2-year-old. So, mostly me. (Actually, my husband is a HUGE help, even though he has to work on Thanksgiving. Without him, there would be no turkey carving, and I would be in the fetal position in the kitchen.)

What frightened me the most was not the turkey — we have a good cooking method for that — but the rolls.

The infamous must-have at every Kant (my husband’s mother’s side) family gathering.

When we’ve made them in years past, my mother-in-law (whose sister holds the coveted recipe in her mind) has been around to help navigate the waters of yeast bread cooking. I have little experience with this particular type of cooking, so when I read that I’m to add “7 cups of flour, maybe 8, until the dough is sticky but not too sticky,” I’m left dumbfounded in the kitchen in a heaping mess of flour.

When you just KNOW how to make the recipe because you’ve been making it for years, having to write it down for someone is tricky. Here are more ACTUAL instructions from the roll recipe.

“Fill the green cup three times.” There’s a specific cup. Not a regular measuring cup, mind you, but a specific cup. One year my  mother-in-law brought it with her. I didn’t bother tracking down THE cup. I used a measuring cup.

“Use the ice cream scoop to stir.” THE ice cream scoop is a wooden-handled spoon from Alaska. We have our own now. We don’t have to borrow. I’m not sure what the secret of the spoon is, but I’m not about to mess with tradition.

On the plus side, if there’s no one around to tell me if I’m doing it right, there’s no one around to tell me if I’m doing it wrong.

Thank God for technology, though. When the dough was turning sticky, I had to phone a friend, or in this case my mother-in-law.

“See, MeeMaw? The dough is sticky.” (And yes my daughter is covered in flour and not wearing pants. Your point?)

So, the rolls. Here they are before the second time rising. Terribly un-roll shaped.

And out of the oven.

They are supposed to look like cloverleafs, not muffin tops. 

Sigh. At least they tasted good.

And we had fun, especially when we used the rest of the dough to make these German doughnut-type treats for breakfast. They’re called kuchelas. (Kewk-uh-luh. Nobody knows how to spell it, but my husband’s family has been making them on Thanksgiving morning for years.)

MMM … doughnuts. We sort of go all Homer Simpson on these things. Here’s the boy licking sugar off of his hands.

And the girl with a mouthful of doughnut. She’s chewing, I promise, though I love that she looks like she’s savoring every bite.

We may not have “won” this round with the rolls, but when it comes to trying to replicate family Thanksgiving traditions,  we consider ourselves winners.

Next up: Christmas cookies. But I’ve got that one in the bag. When it comes to my grandma’s sugar cookie recipe, I got the genes for making them just right.

Do you have any family recipes that are MUST-HAVES at your get-togethers? Who makes them? How have they been passed from generation to generation?

Happy holidays! And happy cooking!