Meet Anneliese, our lovely new baking blogger. Mum to two young boys, Anneliese is starting to show her children the basics in the kitchen. 

Every week Anneliese will be sharing a new recipe that she’s made with her kids plus an update on how she’s been getting on!

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All about Anneliese  |    Cooking with kids    |  Milkshake mice cupcakes

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Thursday 19th September 2013

A tub of strawberry milkshake powder has sat unopened on my kitchen shelves for many months. In fact a thick layer of dust had decided to decorate the once shiny and unblemished lid. When pregnant with my younger boy all I desired in my ungainly state was a glass of strawberry milkshake. Unfortunately, once the milkshake powder had been purchased the thought of drinking the sweet milky drink was enough to turn my stomach, so the package has remained unopened.

After checking the expiry date on the milkshake powder I decided to experiment and put it to good use. Even though I still couldn’t face a strawberry drink, I did very much fancy a milkshake cake! I knew that I wanted both the cake and icing to have the strawberry flavour and I hoped that the icing would come out pink! As I am outnumbered by a family of boys there was no point in piping pretty swirls onto cupcakes, so I decided on making cute little mice instead. However, I insisted that they should be pink!

My three year old, Isaac, was very excited about making these milkshake mice cupcakes as was I. It was so much fun to decorate these cakes and see the delight on Isaac’s face! I have kept the recipe as simple as possible, so it is easy to make them with your children. There isn’t an electric whisk in sight and the icing does not include dreaded icing sugar, so is far less messy! One word of advice is that you might want to make double the icing as it is utterly delicious. I had a little left over and spread it over a digestive biscuit, divine! You have to try it!

Want to make your own milkshake mice cupcakes with the kids?

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All about Anneliese

Hi everyone, my name is Anneliese Giggins and this is my blog dedicated to my 2 adorable children and me having fun in the kitchen.

The dynamic duo

First off there’s Isaac who is 3 years old and then there’s Oliver who is 10 months old. I don’t bake with Oliver as yet but I started baking with Isaac when he was just over a year old. Cooking with my children is really important to me. I remember helping my mum in the kitchen from a very young age. I loved being ‘mummy’s little helper’. It was our time together and I gained a great sense of satisfaction and achievement from seeing a bowl of cake mixture transform into beautiful butterfly cakes.

I used to ask my parents to invite family around for birthdays and Christmas so I could bake for them! I loved to see them enjoying the food I had lovingly prepared.

I now love to bake with Isaac and see the same look of excitement on his face when his creations come out of the oven. When I’m cooking he will drag a dinning room chair across the room and climb up so he can help me! Isaac has also learned all about weighing and the name of ingredients from helping me in the kitchen. It is lovely to spend such quality time with Isaac and I look forward to when Oliver is a little bit older so he can join in too!

Berry heaven

I started Rising To The Berry (my previous blog) when Isaac was 7 months old. I don’t drive and we live in a village so I felt isolated with a young baby. I was also suffering with a case of baby blues and felt I needed to do something for myself and regain a sense of identity. I hadn’t baked anything for over a year and had a bookcase of untouched baking books. One evening I was flicking through Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and decided to set myself the challenge of baking all the 250 recipes! I wanted to document the adventure so the very next day I set up a blog then started on my very first recipe. I baked 3 recipes per week and finally completed the challenge in about 18 months. The icing on the cake was when the Daily Mail printed a double page spread all about my baking adventure; it gave me a real confidence boost and now I have something to show the boys when they are older!

Cooking with children is a real passion of mine and that is why I set up a Facebook page called Cook, Eat & Play. I have ideas for cooking with your children, lunches for fussy eaters, edible play activities and even some craft ideas too.

The bottom line is that I just love all things food and kids… can you tell?

Anneliese x