mama's little helper

This time of year there are work potlucks, friend's holiday parties, and now Ada's daycare holiday party. All which require me to bake something yummy to bring along. I guess I could just go to the store and buy something, but as a former girl scout, I kind of feel like that is cheating.


Earlier this week, I needed to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (yum) for my work potluck and I figured I could make the dough while Elliot made dinner and Ada decided that cookie dough was more interesting than soup so she decided to help me.


Ada is a big butter lover, so when I put the two, yes TWO, sticks of butter in the bowl she almost went into convulsions she was so excited about that much butter in one place. I knew I had to quickly distract her, so I started measuring out the sugar. She was really curious about the strange white substance I was pouring into the measuring cup. Then she figured out how to help me pour the sugar into the bowl. When the mixer started to mix together the sugar and the butter she was really amazed - two of her favorite things being made into one - there really is a heaven. Next was the flour. She has seen flour before at daycare. At daycare, they use flour to teach about texture. So Ada thought she knew what flour was used for - sifting through her fingers, and apparently pouring it all over her little legs. Next we moved on to the pumpkin, Ada was really curious about the slimy squishy orange substance. Then she stuck her finger in the left over pumpkin and tasted it - apparently she like it because she grabbed the spoon and started in on the rest of it. The final piece was the chocolate chips. Up to this point, the highlight of the cookie making experience was probably the butter - but then Ada saw the giant bag of chocolate chips she had picked up at the grocery store a couple of weeks before. And then she saw me open it, and to her wonder, pour most of the contents into the mix we had been working on. At this point, I thought it was important to teach Ada the secret to cookie making. The reason why the maker of the cookies puts forth so much love and effort to make the homemade yumminess for everyone else. Whenever you add chocolate chips to cookie batter, you save a small portion of chocolate chips for yourself to "taste" as the final mixing occurs. And this, this was definitely Ada's FAVORITE part of making cookies.