Olivia's Cake

Olivia loves to crack eggs.  And she's pretty good at it, too.  I remember an incident with my little brother, Joe(y), when he made pancakes and I was picking shells out of my teeth all morning.

This morning, I come into the kitchen to find Olivia spread-eagle on the floor, with a carton of eggs in front of her.  She was "counting" them, which includes a song that goes:

Hickety-pickety my black hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen
One, two, three,
Four, five, six,
Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten.
Gentlemen come every day
To see the eggs my hen doth lay.*

*What the heck is this rhyme about?  In my teen years, I would have ventured to say it contains some sort of sinister sexual undertones...  I don't know what that says about me.  Any thoughts (about the rhyme, not me)?

When she gets to the part about the counting, she dutifully counts the eggs.  It's a fun game, and I've learned to not worry about cracked eggs.  There is something really magical about texture for her and for me, and so when she plunges her hand into a bowl of lentils or flour, I can relate.

As counting eggs brings up the desire to crack them, Olivia then suggested that we make something.

Olivia:  How about a cake?

Me:  What kind of cake?

Olivia:  CARROTcake.

Me:  You ate all the carrots yesterday.

Olivia (without pause):  CHEESEcake!

Me:  We don't have any cheese.

I look into the cabinet and realise we don't even have any flour - at least not the gluten-free kind, which is the only kind we can eat.  But we DO have almond meal.  Hmmm...

Me:  How about almond cake?

Olivia:  ALMOND cake!

So we proceeded to cook an almond cake.  Replete with almond milk, since the only other milk we had was daddy's half-and-half, which is sacred for the morning coffee.

We donned our aprons, and got to work.  We measured and dumped and Olivia got to break her eggs.  Two of them:

 

Then she got to mix:

She even got pick the shape of our cake, which was square.  Which, I just learned, is her favorite shape.  Triangle is runner up.

Here's our final product.  We're going to go eat it now and tell you all about it.  If you are interested in the recipe, I've posted it on my Sweetgrass Blog.  Or at least I will once I've finished eating our cake!