Following in My Footsteps

The girls have always enjoyed "helping" me to cook. Up until recently, that helping has primarily consisted of dumping ingredients that I've measured into the bowl, cracking some eggs (into a separate bowl to make shell retrieval a bit easier), and holding the mixer. But today we turned a bit of a corner while making Banana Pudding.

I prefer making homemade, cooked vanilla custard--it tastes SO much better than the instant pudding! And I can use skim milk without it really being obvious. I had already whisked the ingredients together when the girls came downstairs and asked to help. I was a bit nervous, but decided to let them try stirring the custard until it came to a boil. I really thought they'd get bored after 4 or 5 minutes. But they kept at it for the full 20 minutes! I was so proud of them. They also used real knives (*gulp*) to slice the bananas. Now, I did have to slice some of their pieces into 2 or 3 thinner slices on occasion, but they really did a great job with this task too. Next, they layered the vanilla wafers and bananas on the custard (I had to do the custard since it was a large, hot, heavy pot). And finally they helped to squirt the whipped cream all over the top and spread it. They revelled in the compliments from all our friends.

Now to figure out how to make sure they don't try to make brownies the same way as I did...