Blasphemy or creativity?

It was one of those days when my six-year-old daughter keeps whining: “I'm bored! I've nothing to do! Play with me!” Sometimes I can persuade her to listen to a story or we do some drawing or colouring, but unless I make a suggestion quickly, I'll end up playing house with her. And every time (every single time!) I get to be the mother and I get to cook. Come on, that's what I do anyway, every day!

So what do you do to keep things interesting for both of you? Witness the miraculous powers of chocolate... works every time, in any situation!

My suggestion, “Let's make some chocolates!” was met with boundless enthusiasm, manifested in happy shrieks, hand-clapping and a little dance. Well, we didn't actually make chocolate. We didn't have the ingredients. But I took out all the leftover chocolates – the sad, odd extra pieces, the bits and slivers that are born when chocolate refuses to break into neat pieces or when the squares can't be divided equally. I normally use them in baking (chocolate chip muffins etc.), but now I just melted the whole lot and blended it all together. This is probably the part that would be frowned upon by every chocolate connoisseur and would make them cry sacrilege... but I thought we were being rather creative! And thanks to this idea, no chocolate was wasted. Thus, a tragedy avoided.

I let my daughter pour the molten chocolate into tiny moulds, chopped up a few leftover pieces of white chocolate and “pink” chocolate (raspberry flavoured white chocolate) and let her decorate the pieces with those. I thought that there'd be chocolate splattered all over the kitchen when we finished, but she surprised me with her attention to detail and the precision and care with which she worked. And that was not only when she got to lick the mixing bowl and all the utensils... The chocolates turned out pretty and yummy and, most importantly, nobody was bored. :)