Cooking with Son..... boy is it hard work lol

Charlie is having cooking (not that they call it that now)as one of his subjects next year....and as I am not at all impressed with his schools cooking instruction so far we are going to be cooking together during the holiday.

So today we both have new aprons and have been baking. But being the scientist he is everything has to be soooo acurate!

Anyway, the cake is in the oven, mmmmmmmm.

mmmmmm Smells lovely Charlie well done.

Lol it does too!

Just got to wait until the melted choc fudge cools to make it up. Then I'll post a pic.

Soured cream choc cake

Oohh, I have such a "thing" about school home-ec lessons (or whatever they're called)...

They're absolutely useless, and don't teach kids half the things they need to know to be able to cook for themselves!

Good on you for baking etc with him!
Mmmm, sounds good!

If he's into cakes/desserts/sweet things, James Martin's "Sweet Baby James" cookbook is a good buy!

Thanks Shelley, glad (though sad) I'm not the only one who feels this way about cooking at school. My son has cooked the same thing over and over at school, nachos. Yes, he loves them, but he can make them here all the time, they are easy peasy. They just get to cook whatever they want, what is the point in that? How do they learn different techniques?

I might give that book a look as never saw the series on tv. My son is pretty good at cooking when he puts his mind to it, I'm just trying to get him to be a bit more relaxed about his measurements!

Here is the finished sour cream choc cake....






It's a very easy recipe, all ingredients whisked in together, no creaming, etc.

mmmmmm post me some!!!

i did food tech in school - if i didnt burn it - something was wrong

Your cake looks lovely

Nacho's aren't cooking!! They're just putting stuff together!

Kids need to learn about basics - how to prep and cook vegetables in various ways, basic pasta sauces, how to roast a chicken, how to cook fish, make a casserole, make pastry, make a sponge cake etc.

They need to learn about food hygiene, about freshness, quality, about in-season food.

(OK, off soapbox now )

My cookery lessons were ridiculous. We made pizza (using shop bought ingredients), fairy cakes and scones and variations on those.

Luckily, I love to cook, and on our "free choice" week I made choux pastry profiteroles from scratch, with creme patisserie filling and chocolate-toffee sauce. I was about 14!!

However, when I moved out of home, I couldn't cook a chicken, couldn't make pastry (or even use frozen pastry) or anything!

Well we've done the sponge cake today and he's roasting a chicken for his Dad later.
He has helped me with spaghetti sauce before, so we're getting there. We've done home made pizza from scratch with all the proper ingredients like wet mozzarella etc. He loved that.

Good for you for cooking with him. I agree with everyone else here about how poor cooking at school was. It was exactly the same in Canada...useless. Luckily my mum encouraged me to cook and I've always experimented with food. I think it's so important, especially for the boys to learn to cook properly. OH is a better cook than me and says it's because he lived on a pittance in college and experimented with all the basics.

Wow that cake looks gorgeous, just right for my pudding, I've just eaten my tea.