Caroline's White Cake With Chocolate Frosting

Caroline is six.  Don't you think it's high time she should know how to bake a cake and make frosting? 

She certainly thinks so. 

So first thing this morning - 7AM - we put our aprons on and got to baking.  She made me promise that she could do the WHOLE THING by herself.  Luckily enough for me, I didn't have a single thing planned this weekend, so at 7am we went at it.  Well, she did.

I tried to show her how to crack the eggs to separate them and she kept breaking the yolks.  She looked me straight in the eye and said "If you just leave me alone and let me do it, they won't break."  She didn't break a single one after I let her be!

Normally I don't let the kids get too dirty in the kitchen and make a big mess, but she wanted to feel what the yolks felt like.  :)  She said they were squishy.

Our next door neighbor Megan came over right when it was time to taste the batter.  She has great timing!

Semi-sweet chocolate for the frosting, ready to go into the food processor.

I've tried several different methods of melting chocolate that are much quicker than this. Using a double broiler seems to produce a better consistency though.

My son happened to wander over when the frosting was done.  He has good timing too!

Don't you just want to eat this?  Click Here for the frosting recipe.

Ever wonder how people frost a chocolate cake and never seem to get any of the frosting on their cake plate?  This is how: cut up four squares of parchement paper and overlap them so no part of the cake plate is exposed.  When the cake is set, then pull out the parchment and voila!

Sampling her work....

Click Here

for the recipe

We made a special trip to the store to get ice cream for her.  *Of course, she added sprinkles.**  it's just not finished without sprinkes!