Category: Food for Tots (Page 1 of 2)

Yesterday Mika decided to make a cake all by herself. I wasn’t allowed to be anywhere near the kitchen. She started with an Angel food cake mix, to which she added milk, an egg, coconut, sugar and mashed banana – she didn’t measure how much of each she put. She baked it in a 350F for about half an hour (until golden). The results were amazing. The cake had an almost flannish consistency, a bit gritty because of the coconut, but that worked out very well. The coconut-banana flavor was subtle, but present. The cake kept its moist consistency and it tasted great. Kudos to Mika!

Last night I made milanesas. I hadn’t realized how long it’d been since I last made them, but neither my 7 nor my 4 yo remembered them. For the uninitiated, milanesas are simply thin cutlets of meat that are pounded, passed through an egg bath and then breaded with bread crumbs (I use Italian style for extra flavor, and add salt & parsley flakes to the egg). You fry them in a little bit of oil (I use olive) and then eat them. They are particularly good with lemon juice squeezed on them.
As usually, the kids first refused to eat them – pronouncing them “yucky”. Also as usual, Mika, who was unusually hungry, agreed to try a bite – and she loved it! Camila followed and she liked them as well, though didn’t eat that much of it. Mika had seconds and requested that I make milanesas twice a week now. Well, that’s unlikely to happen but I will cook them more often.
The main reason why I made them was that now the girls have swimming until late twice a week – so on those days I need dishes that I can make very quickly. Milanesas are very quick to make (and you can even make them in advance), and you can cook them in the oven if you want to avoid using oil.

The Easy Bake Oven I bought Mika for Christmas has been recalled for the second time – this time permanently. Soon they will send me a box to send it back to them in exchange for some amount of credit on Hasbro products. Problem is, I have a bunch of mixes that came with the oven plus a couple of more they sent me when they sent the “fix” for the problem. They are really expensive – $7-$11! -, and I want to use them up. So, I suspect in the next couple of weeks I’ll be doing quite a bit of “easy baking” with the girls (don’t worry, I don’t let them anywhere near the oven by themselves).
Today we baked the yellow cake with chocolate frosting, pictured in the left. You can see below how the cake actually turned out. It didn’t rise very much (surprise, surprise), but the chocolate frosting was yummy and the two went well together. My little girls were happy with it. They decorated with a cat cookie and pretended it was a birthday cake.

A mom told me about these sandwich cutters available at Safeway, and I couldn’t believe how useful and simple in design they are. My kids will eat crusted sandwiches, as much as they eat any sandwich, but I know kids who wont, and when I have kids over I always make sure to take off the crusts. It’s always a pain and it never looks nice.
I also cut the crusts when I make tea sandwiches, and these crustless cutters are the solution. The only ones I could find at Safeway were the heart one and the 4X one, but I think the 2X one would be better for my needs. Still, tr