Food for thought; Dinosaur Cakes

The toddlers apron, a bit worse for wear these days (available here)

Sharing a car works for us most of the time, but an imminent move to somewhere where public transport is less accessible, has led to us buying our second car.  We pick it up in 7-10 days (apparently) so we are on our last week of car sharing.  Which is good.  Because I tend to leave the pram in the car.  And the Ergo.  And my prescription sunglasses (non-essential but they look good).  And off they go a 15 minute drive down the Sheikh Zayed Road away.  And with it our chance to venture any further than our pool or the lake.  I'm not sure if you've ever tried walking far with a 13kg toddler?  Mine is good for, oh, all of 2 minutes with hand holding and going the direction I want him to.  So the 20 minute walk up to the metro is a definite pram.

I'm sure you can see where I am going with this.

Today was one of those days.  I made plans to go out and have a playdate where I would need to get the metro.  Up we get and wave Daddy off to work.  Sit back and chill with my cup of tea while the toddler terror pulls out his choo choo train demanding that I "build it" when 15 minutes pass and I realise that I have left all toddler transporting equipment in the car.  Cue one phone call to the husband later confirming what I knew, i.e. that he is pulling into the car park at work so tough luck.  And a house (or well Greens) bound day beckons.

So I decided to play on the toddlers love of baking.  And my own sweet tooth.  Oh and to play with my new electronic scale toy, and cracked open my +The Hummingbird Bakery cake book.  And the toddlers new dinosaur silicon cake moulds (hence dinosaur cakes!).  And we made chocolate orange cakes, sans chocolate orange frosting, as I ran out of cocoa powder and couldn't be bothered to drag said toddler terror the one mile to the shop!

Dinosaur moulds; (available here)

The Recipe; Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

Ingredients (for the cake):

70g butter, softened

210g caster sugar

105g soft light brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp finely grated orange zest*

255g plain flour

50g cocoa

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

240ml whole milk

How to do it

1. Pre-heat oven to 190

2. Weigh out all ingredients so toddler terror doesn't have to wait around and play with mummy's new scale toy

My new toy, available here

3. Cream together butter and both sugars using hand held whisk

4. Beat in the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla essence and orange

5. Sift in the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl

6. Add sifted mix to the creamed mix in 3 batches with the milk.  Once everything incorporated turn up the speed and give it a good beating (and terrify the toddler who will now be screaming "Mummy carry Mummy carry")

7. Divide the mix between the paper cases/dinosaur moulds.  Make sure each is about two-thirds full

8. Place in the oven and bake for 18-20 mins

9. Give up baking with toddler and frost using whatever icing you may have in a tub.  Or not at all!

And because the husband came home and claimed all cakes to take to work....I don't actually have a picture of the finished product....however I am reliably informed that he was particularly popular that day!

* Orange Zest

Again, I didn't have this in, but I have been introduced to doTERRA essential oils by +Lora Critchley of the21stcenturymama.  And a little while ago I bought a sample of Wild Orange Essential Oil, which, can be used to replace orange zest or orange extract (link here) with 1 drop to 1 tsp of extract.  And a tablespoon of zest is approximately 1 tsp of extract, so I replaced the above orange zest with one drop of doTERRA's wild orange.  And it works!!

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