Cake making with Dr Oetker

Making and decorating cakes with children is such a fun activity. Making them helps with conversations as well as teaching them useful skills. Then comes the fun bit of eating the cakes later on. The cakes don’t have to be masterpieces, any cake recipe will do with kids, but it does help to have some nice decorations to make things more fun and colourful.
We have been sent a big package of cake making and decorating goodies from Dr Oetker.

You may be thinking you have also spotted the Dr Oetker label on pizzas. Well you would be correct as they also sell pizzas as well as cake, baking and decorating products.
In my package were lots of different items just for cakes, including cooking chocolate bars, chocolate chips, cake making ingredients and several edible cake decorations.

The only tough decision now was what to make.
When making cakes with kids, I find it is usually best to keep things simple and leave the Michelin star layer cakes for another time when kids are out of the way.

WHITE CHOCOLATE KRISPY CAKES

So first thing we decided to make was easy rice Krispy cakes. However these Krispy cakes were a little different being made with white chocolate instead of milk.

They are so easy to make. I find the easiest way to do them is to melt the chocolate in a plastic bowl. I use the microwave method and it only takes about 1 minute 20 seconds. Once the chocolate is melted I then add the Rice Krispies into the bowl of chocolate. Some people tip the chocolate into the Krispies but I think it wastes chocolate this way.
Once the chocolate and Krispies are mixed and places into bun cases my children decided to add more colour using some of the Dr Oetker shaker pots.

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For these cakes we used the Sugar stars and the hundreds and thousands.

The cakes look very colourful and tasted great. They didn’t last long tho.

CARAMEL & CHOCOLATE SHORTBREAD
Using the milk chocolate bar. We made chocolate caramel shortbread squares.

The shortbread base is easily made using just flour, caster sugar and butter. The caramel can be pre bought in tins or made using carnation milk, butter and syrup; then poured over the shortbread. Then the melted chocolate goes on top.

Ryan and Jordanna thought it needed some extra colour and so sprinkled some hundreds and thousands and the soft silver pearls on top.

We had never made these before but they were so simple and turned out quite well.

CHOC CHUNK MUFFINS
Chocolate chip muffins are also really easy to make and kids love them. To help us with our muffins we used the Dr Oetker baking powder satchets and the Dr a Oetker chocolate chunks, plus a very small amount of the Dr Oetker Madagascan vanilla.

The muffins only require a few other basic ingredients which are usually in most household cupboards. Flour, egg, sugar, butter, milk and a few small ingredients from Dr Oetker is all that was needed for our delicious muffins.
The satchets of baking powder are really useful as they contain one convenient level teaspoon which is what many recipes require.
The chocolate chunks come larger than most varieties of chocolate chips and maintain there form when baked.
Madagascan vanilla comes from the fruit of the Orchid and is a natural extract of fine quality vanilla pods.

DECORATIONS
These 3 cake decoration packs will come in useful for making decorative ice buns and other cakes.

The chocolate heart decorations are made from premium white and milk chocolate. There are 30 hearts in the packet.
Wafer butterflies and daisies and completely edible and give a pretty finishing touch to any cake, cookie or biscuit.

EGG POWDER
I have not got around to using the final product in my goody package.
Egg White Powder – also in handy sachets, can be used in place of fresh egg whites. It removes the need and messiness of separating egg white and yolk.

I am a big lover of meringues but never made them. This little packet of powder certainly gives me some incentive to try. The sachet packs all contain 4 packets. So if the first try goes wrong then there is plenty more to try again.
I think baking and cake decorating is all about practice and trial and error to get things right. Dr Oetker sells everything that is needed to both make and decorate cakes. Each product is individually priced but remains fairly low cost. Everything is available for quick order in their Online shop. Many of the products can be stored in cupboards for a certain amount of time once opened and used again multiple times.
I am lucky enough to have a fair bit of cupboard storage and find it a good idea to reserve one easy reach shelf for baking and cake goods. This way I know where they all are when I need them and not taking everything out trying to find them. This also stops my baking goods being forgot about and left at the back for years on end. Trust me I know of several people with all sorts of things lurking the back of their food cupboards.
A big thank you to Dr Oetker for our great baking goodies.