Cooking with my Girls

This is a cake I recently made with my girls to celebrate my mom's birthday.  I am posting it not because it is a beautiful cake; not because it was scrumptious (although it was!); not to toot my own horn in any way. I am posting it because it represents something that is important to me - cooking with my girls.

Cooking is a family tradition that I hope to maintain.  You see, I come from a long line of great cooks.  My mom is a great cook.  It seems she takes food with her everywhere she goes and - trust me - nobody complains!!  She can make a pound cake or a lemon pie with her eyes closed, I bet.  Her mom was a great cook, too, though I never had the pleasure of tasting her food because she passed away before I was born.  My dad's mom was a great cook, also - her Thanksgiving dressing and her cream puffs are legendary!  My mother in law is also a fantastic cook.  I learned soon after entering the Witherspoon family that nobody makes potato salad or lasagna quite like hers.  Speaking of family -  boy, oh, boy - you should see the spreads of food at family gatherings.  There's always enough to feed an army and most of it is all homemade.  Maybe it is partially a southern thing, but, hey, my family is southern through and through!

 I loved to cook with my mom when I was younger and most of what I know about cooking I learned from her.  Now that I have daughters,  I love to cook with them and, most of the time, they like to cook with me, too.  It is one way we get some of that stuff called "quality time."  There is so much they can learn from cooking, too.  Things like math concepts, science concepts, and following directions can all be gleaned from following a recipe.  (Yes, that's the former preschool teacher in me resurfacing a little bit.)  It also gives such a sense of accomplishment - to follow the process from start to finish; see the beautiful finished product; and see the joy it gives others when you share it.

At least one of my girls is certainly taking the cooking tradition to heart.  My middle daughter, Megan, loves to cook with me and watch cooking shows.  She even says she might be a chef when she grows up.  Who knows - maybe someday she will be on T.V. cooking a fabulous birthday cake for me!!


P.S.  Here's a link to the recipe for the cake that's pictured ~
http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/chocolate-strawberry-cake-with-fluffy-frosting/14b8ee5c-4fe7-41c5-95c6-ec9e323845da?sr=2&st=7#/?term=chocolate+strawberry+cake&pi=1&mr=20