Pizza, Cookies, and Mario Cake, Oh my!

My 4 year old son has been talking about cooking and baking nonstop for about 2 weeks now. He even started saying he is going to be a baker when he grows up. I am all about fostering what my kids are into even if it is a phase. However, for me baking is more a weekend task. I don’t get off work and want to spend my evening in the kitchen making cookies. I just don’t.

So last weekend I let the kiddos build their own pizzas. They loved that. It actually turned out better than most of the take out places we would have ordered from. Then we made and decorated sugar cookies from scratch.

I thought that would have appeased them for a minute, but Monday night they watched a Mario themed episode of Cake Wars. My kids love Mario games, even though they can’t really play them yet (ages 2 and 4). They want my husband and I to play or are always asking to watch game clips on youtube. Monday night after watching this Cake Wars episode my daughter and husband played Mario Kart together while my son came up with a design for a drawing we made together.

A Mario cake factory > Mario standing on a cake fighting Bowser on a brick bridge with a jailed princess behind him > a pipe, coins, and bricks > A Bowser castle

Then Tuesday night they were still inspired and wanted to make an actual Mario cake. I am not a huge baker, and we were out of sugar. I dug and found a box of brownie mix though. Then we draw character cutouts, taped them on straws, and stuck them in the baked brownies. Ta-Da! Mario Cake!

They used the character cutouts as puppets and are now asking for a Yoshi and Toadstool. Where’s the Luigi love I wonder? Oh and if you can’t tell what that is towards the bottom, it’s lava, by request of course. For not liking to bake on weeknight we had a lot of fun.