False alarm and imperfect muffins

Today shortly after I dropped off Emma at kinder garden at 9h and pottered off home to recover from a week-end of toddler-induced activity, I received a call from kinder garden telling me Emma had thrown up and was probably ill.

Emma on her way to school this morning

I immediately went to pick her up and was pleasantly surprised when she greeted me with her usual loud "Meine Mummy! Meine Mummy!" (my Mummy) just in case someone else were to claim me.

Her teacher informed me that she did not have any fever and admitted she did not seem ill (not in the slightest) but since she had thrown up...
After a few questions I gathered Emma had in fact thrown up while running around on the roof after breakfast in her fleece jacket in the sun (she apparently paused in her running to do this). I figured she probably got hot and choked up but just to be sure she was not coming down with the "abdominal flu" already contaminating some of her fellow kinder garden-goers, I took her home.

After a light lunch of soup and yogurt and a nap (still no fever nor vomiting) I decided we would stay in and try and make some muffins (enough walking to and around and from the Imperial Zoo on Sunday).

Admittedly, I had one of those "quick mixes" in the cupboard but I figured as a first cooking-at-home-with-Mum-experience it would do.
Emma's Stargroup class now cooks on Thursdays but so far, Emma had not been interested in the slightest -surprise, surprise- unless she can eat the ingredients...

I got her tiny table and chairs set up in the kitchen (there is no table in our kitchen) so that she could actually participate properly, got out the mixer, figured out the instructions in German , measured out the milk and checked that we had eggs and instructed Emma to lay out the muffin paper cups... Then, I realized I did not have the required amount of sunflower oil (we use Olive most of the time). Preggie brain = a lot less organized!

Off we went to the shop on foot.

... So about one hour later (once we had named the colors of all the cars on the street, done some standing somersaults, tested the temperature of the shop windows -she literally touches them to see if they are hot due to the sun and announces "c'est chaud Maman" or "non, ça va", walked down a zillion stairs, collected some more chestnuts, sung Incy Mincy (wincy?) Spider and Frères Jaques) we finally got home and back to the muffin mixture.

Here are the pics. The muffin making actually went ok.






Emma

• did inevitably eat some of the mixture and especially the chocolate chips
• managed to get some of the dough mix in the paper cups (although she kept losing patience when it took a while to blob off her spoon resorting to waving the spoon off in another direction predictably leaving traces of the dough mix across the table and floor)
• alternated ordering me to stop ("arrête Maman!" when I tried to scoop more mix on to her spoon) and complimenting me ("Bravo Maman! c'est bien!" when I successfully blobbed some dough in the paper cup)
  
• enjoyed helping with some of the cleaning up (handing me the spoons and wiping her table) and being picked up to watch the muffins rise

However, when we finished eating dinner tonight and it was finally time to taste them,
she took one bite and said "gâteaux pas bien" (i.e. cake not good - although the correct form in French would have been "bon" and not "bien") and asked for yogurt instead. (Note that this is the first time ever that Emma has turned down a cake, biscuit or muffin and although I'm sure she enjoyed dinner I somehow doubt it was all due to a full tummy.)

After having tried them myself, I have to say; Emma definitely knows a home made cake from a "quick mix".