Adelaide Pt 3: Baking with Emily.

The reason for travelling to Adelaide at this particular time was to go to my younger granddaughter Caitlin's first birthday. Neither Lyndall nor Jonathan bake, so I got to make the birthday cake - with Emily's help of course.

Here she is wearing her "cooking clothes" (a gift from one of Lyndall's friends) and wielding her "cooking brush", which, along with a "cooking spoon", a rolling pin, and some cookie cutters, were a gift from me. Here we are, making the banana cake which I later trimmed and iced as Pocoyo.


The "cooking spoon" is in there somewhere, she did a great job of mixing the cake with it.


And here is Emily the next day, her mouth stuffed with pikelet, waiting for Grandma's pikelets to finish cooking so she can do her own:


The pink cooking clothes were in the wash by this stage - covered in banana cake mixture - so she's wearing her green hippopotamus apron.

Here she is making her own pikelet(s):


And here are the two girls with the finished cake and pikelets (which have been buttered and sprinkled with "Hundreds and Thousands"):


Emily has just blown out the candle on behalf of her little sister. This is very exciting, as you can tell from her face. Unfortunately poor little Caitlin didn't get to eat any of it - she still chokes on anything lumpier than a purée.

We made pikelets a couple of times while I was there, and corn fritters for lunch once.

Pikelet recipe

Beat together until foamy:
1 egg and
1/3 cup of sugar

add:
2/3 cup of milk
and mix

add:
1 cup of flour
1 pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
and mix

melt
1 tbsp butter in the pan you're going to cook the pikelets in
add it to the mixture and mix.

drop tablespoonsful onto the medium hot pan (7 on a 1-10 electric frypan thermostat), and flip when bubbles rise to the surface.

An electric frying pan is ideal for these - you get a large area of fairly even temperature, so you can cook quite a few at once.

As they are cooked wrap them in a clean tea-towel to keep warm and moist - unless you have a bunch of gannet-like children and men waiting, in which case they disappear as soon as you remove them from the pan. Normally served buttered with jam on.