Documenting little moments - Dad’s Birthday Cake baking attempt

My new year has started with a rather intense photography course that I am taking. The course is to help me see things differently in photographic moments, weddings and family time, to see the layers, the authentic life just happening and how to make it look interesting in the camera. Being in winter with a newborn and a toddler, we spend a lot of time in a small space indoors, so coming up with activities is crucial for all of us, and each little adventure leads to a new daily photo attempt as part of my “homework” of trying out these new technical skills, tricks and tools to document our day.

I want to do more of these candid childhood documentary photo sessions with clients, so today was just a bit of an experiment. I hand him the tools and ingredients and off he goes.

Kids baking photos are super cute, and a bit trendy, but I just wanted to have some fun with my little guy, who is 19 months old and very eager to do anything I show him.

He gets to pour the batter mix in the bowl.

He gets to add the water.

And his favourite part, he gets to play with the whisk. He did sample the batter but the whisk was still more exciting.

As someone who never bakes, this spontaneous cake project didn't go very well. I was lucky that I even had cake mix in the house and since we were snowed in for the day, I thought this was the best idea to do last minute for my husband’s birthday without leaving the house to go buy a cake instead.

Our morning snow day window view on Vancouver Island

The problem was we didn't have even some of the basic things I needed.
I didn't have two cake pans, and I didn't realize that was a thing until I went to make the actual cake, finished the mix and THEN saw the photo on the back saying 2 cake pans needed.

I had to use a cupcake tray and a single cake pan to improvise. I even found cupcake liners, and I'm surprised as they had probably been kicking around the rarely opened baking drawer for at least 5 years in all of our different times moving to new places.

Then comes the part where you need to ice the cake.
Lucky for me. I had bought some icing sugar and M&M's to do Christmas baking. But making the icing is a different challenge.

Christmas baking never happened. It's the same story every year. Christmas baking is good intentions. I pick up all the stuff for it for recipes and then I never bake and, even having all four weekends off in December, we still never had the time. Baking is not high on my list of things ever, but I do appreciate everybody else's baking.

THEN I need to try to ice the cake. It's a snow day. I can't just go to the grocery store and get ingredients. I realized this morning that I was out of milk which, I also need this evening for my toddler, and I have very little dairy, I’m out of almond milk and I have no idea if I have anything else to make icing with. The only thing that I got lucky with, was finding a block of cream cheese in the fridge. We are now making a cream cheese icing cake for our chocolate cake using the M&M's leftover from Christmas and hopefully, it's a success.

How much chocolate is too much to get all over the place when letting your child help you make a cake?

Documentary photo of baking fun - Vancouver Island

In addition to not having ingredients, I also didn't know that this stuff needs to be at room temperature. That means pre-planning. I am more of a grab-a-recipe-and-get-rolling kind of person. So I threw the butter and cream cheese precariously onto the baseboard heater for a minute, and there we go “room temperature spreadables”. It worked and was much more precarious, and satisfying than the microwave.

I'm madly looking for some way to ice the cake cuz I also don't seem to own a spatula for this task. And as he’s pulling in the driveway, the very home made attempt at a cake landed on the table and worked out just fine.

So at the end of the day these are all good reminders of why I don't bake. I should probably have things in the freezer instead
But the pictures sure turned out cute. And we decided to make a birthday and balloons to go with the birthday theme for the day.

These are the little things that would all be forgotten. But documenting the moments makes it memorable for the long term.

I am offering new documentary childhood sessions this year,

click here for the gallery and more info

If you had fun reading this post, please take a peek at my photography work and maybe you’ll find other inspiration for your own childhood photos from my portfolio.
You can also see some unique scenic beauty from Vancouver Island & Gabriola Island, Canada for travel inspiration with your family.