Have fun playing with dough

“Is yucky,” 2-year-old Jacob proclaimed as he held up dripping globs of sticky dough. Then he grinned and dove back into the bowl with both hands.
I thought it would be a bonding experience to make cinnamon rolls with Emma, Jacob’s 5-year-old sister. A little measuring, a little counting, some stirring, rolling, sprinkling and more rolling is what I was planning.
What is that old saying about the best laid plans going awry? First Emma had to dress for the part. While she was getting changed, Jacob decided he wanted to help. I had pre-measured most of the ingredients and let him dump them into the bowl, which he did with great gusto.
Emma finally came out wearing a princess dress topped by a cowgirl shirt several sizes too big and a pink cowboy hat. I handed them each a whisk. After a few seconds of stirring, they abandoned the whisks and used their hands. Thank goodness they had each been bathed after earlier plastering each other from head to toe with mud in the backyard.
It was a very well mixed combination of ingredients by the time it was ready to be turned out onto the table to be kneaded. I used the term kneaded but it was unlike any kneading I have ever seen. When the dough was ready to go into a greased bowl to rise, Emma had flour up to her elbows.
Jacob’s arms were well coated and there were bits of dough stuck to most of his bare belly and even some on his legs and back. The only part that didn’t have dough on it was the dinosaur on the rear of his orange big boy underwear; which was the only thing he was wearing.
I started to pick up the measuring utensils while they were kneading and stepped on something sticky. After cleaning a glob of raw cinnamon rolls off my foot I tried again. Oops, more dough on the floor. I finally managed to get all the utensils into the sink before attempting to separate the dough from Chef Jacob and his cowgirl princess assistant.
I left a thin layer of dough on the cowgirl princess and she ran off to the bathroom to wash. Chef Jacob was another matter. I relocated as much dough as I could to the bowl. His drawers were stripped off and his mother very gingerly carried him off to be bathed. While she was doing that I cleaned up the rest of the mess and set the bowl of dough on the stove to rise.
Thankfully by this time it was bedtime. I shaped the risen dough into rolls and stuck them in the refrigerator to rise slowly overnight. The next morning I baked them. They smelled delicious. Emma iced them before she even got dressed.
At first both children pronounced them “yucky” when they tasted them. Their mom and I thought they turned out quite well, all things considered. After seeing how much the two of us liked the rolls, the children changed their minds and decided they were acceptable. Later my daughter said she wished we hadn’t made them because she wanted to finish the last two before bedtime.
Making cinnamon rolls was a learning experience for all of us. I had tried a new recipe, the children got to watch the effects of yeast and play in a sticky mess and my daughter reaped the benefits of our cooking. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind but we all had fun.
And we did learn that leftover cinnamon roll dough washed off a child doesn’t really rise in the bathtub. It just looks yucky.[[In-content Ad]]