Baking With "Master Chef" Tovin

I have a love/hate relationship with the Pinterest website!  I love all of the great ideas and recipes that a person can find, but I dislike that I have only had time to do a couple of the creative projects people have come up with.  We have tried many of the recipes though, and they all have all been delicious!

Last week we forgot about dad's birthday - oops sorry!  So we decided to make a cake for today to have at the Red Rooster after church.  I just pinned this cake recipe this past week.  It looked amazing; it came from website Something Swanky, and is called Better Than Thin Mints...

Last night when I pulled the eggs out of the refrigerator to start the cake mix, Tovin went crazy.  He loves to crack the eggs when he has them in the morning!  He ended up helping with the rest of the cake!  

So I thought I would document his first baking experience...

This is your first Baking lesson from Tovin...I'm sure there will be more baking lessons to come he really enjoyed helping!

The first step is to bake a normal chocolate cake.  We used a milk chocolate flavor, but I don't think that it matters what kind.

While the cake was baking we crushed up a box of precious Girl Scouts Thin Mint cookies.  It's such a shame to crush these delicious cookies up, but it will be worth it!  I first put the cookies in a Ziplock baggie, and then let Tovin have a fun time crushing the cookies to pieces.  This step was a great fine motor activity for him!

Then we unwrapped the Andes Mints...I'm not sure how many mints ended up in his mouth, I know at least a couple did!

The next step we broke up the mints into smaller pieces.  We put the mint pieces in another Ziplock baggie, and placed them in the refrigerator.

The recipe said to let the cake cool completely.  It was late at night so we decided to finish the cake Sunday morning.  Which meant that we needed to get up early today!  The recipe stated that it should be cooled for at least four hours before serving. 

When we woke up we poked at least twenty holes in the cake and then poured Sweetened Condensed Milk over the top making sure we filled all the holes with the sweet goodness!

The next step we did was to heat the hot fudge sauce in the microwave for 30 to 40 seconds.  It just needs to be warmed a little to soften it.

We than poured half of the crumbled Thin Mint cookies into the hot fudge sauce... 

and stirred!

Tovin then spread the cookie/fudge sauce over the cake.

In the Fat Free Cool Whip container Tovin mixed in some Creme de Menthe syrup.  The actual recipe suggested using a Duncan Hines Mint flavor packet, but we couldn't find that at our local grocery store so we improvised and used the syrup.  

Tovin then spread the mixed Cool Whip over the top of the cake.

He made sure he left enough Cool Whip on the spatula to lick off!

He then sprinkled the left over crumbled Thin Mint cookies over the top of the Cool Whip, and strategically placed the Andes Mints on the top of the cake...

...and a couple were placed in his mouth!

Voila...When he was done he had made an amazing refreshing summer time cake!  Thanks Tovin for being a great baking partner!  Someday we will have Miss. Mindy teach you how to make her famous chocolate chip cookies so you can make them for us!

Tovin was so proud of his master piece, and we were so proud of him!