Baking Kolaches!

We had our first ever family baking event this week! We made kolaches together- kolaches are a Czech pastry that my great-grandmother used to bake often and now my grandparents and mom make as well. I have very fond memories of eating kolaches and helping along the baking process.

Ellie isn't totally into helping in the kitchen yet, though she does have a little kitchen that she will work in. She cuts and mixes...and whips up all sorts of wonderful things! So we pulled up a chair and let her in on the kolache action.

She watched intently and then we had to pull out her little mixer....unfortunately she didn't really want to pretend with her mixer, she wanted something in her mixing bowl! So I gave her a little flour figuring that couldn't hurt the toy. She had to "test it out" and I don't think she was particularly impressed with the taste of flour!

Then Missy got in the way and was covered with flour...

We finally called daddy in to the rescue to help with the kneading! That is hard work!

Ellie especially loved covering her hands with flour...so her dough wouldn't stick! Surprisingly, she didn't really like touching the dough.

After letting them rise (and a break for a bath) we rolled out the dough!

My mom came just in time to help us fill the last couple pans. We made cherry and blueberry filled. The traditional ones that my family makes are cherry and prune but we didn't have Grandpa Lorin over to help us eat the prune so we decided to try blueberry.

Yummy!!! Ellie refused to try one. She doesn't know what she is missing :)

We had a lot of fun but baking is hard work! I wasn't overly impressed with our kolaches. My mom and my grandparents have it down much better than I do. I guess I'll have to try again!