Oaty fruity spicy cookies

These biscuits are actually not too unhealthy, so perfect for kid lunchboxes. They’re really easy to make as well – if I can make them then anyone can – so kids can get involved in making them.

Ingredients

80g butter
80g sugar
1 egg
100g plain flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon or mixed spice
50g oats (I used a packet of plain oat so simple!)
50g mixed fruit

Heat the oven to gas mark five
Cream butter and sugar in a bowl
Beat egg in a separate bowl and mix into butter and sugar
Add the flour, spice, fruit and oats and mix well. (Harrison loved this bit!)
Roll into balls and place on a baking tray. Flatten down slightly.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, or when they are golden brown.
Eat!

I’ve had a go at making these without the spice and fruit, and with chocolate chips. Not quite as healthy but equally as yummy!!

There should have been six fairly big ones but a certain small person was found helping himself before I got a photo!

Toddler food: Vegetable Soup

Another day where the kids have demolished a big bowl of homemade soup. This definitely goes a way towards having 5 a day!

Ingredients

4 large potatoes
1 leek
2 large carrots
1/2 cabbage
2 onions
1 litre of veg stock

I literally peeled, chopped and chucked it in the saucepan until all the veggies were soft – about twenty minutes –  and then whacked it in the blender until it was smooth. We had it with chopped up wraps to dip in.

Chocolate and Banana Muffins

Whilst waiting for the spaghetti to cook and cool down for out latest art project (will reveal more tomorrow!), we did a bit of baking!

We are terrible for wasting bananas. The kids go through phases when one minute they’re demolishing them, and them when I buy loads they go off them, meaning I end up chucking them. I love making banana cake but if it’s cut into slices the kids won’t eat it, so today when I saw the bananas being just a couple of days away
from being inedible I decided to make
kid friendly banana cupcakes. We made them even more yummy by making them chocolatey! These are bite sized little muffins and would make a perfect breakfast treat! The banana keeps the cake really moist for several days.

Ingredients

4oz flour
4oz butter
4 oz sugar
2 eggs
3 very ripe mashed bananas
2oz cocoa powder

I am a bit of a chuck it all in kind of cook, so once I preheated the oven to gas mark 5 (no idea for electric cookers!) we washed our hands, and after helping me weigh all the ingredients out carefully (perfect numeracy teaching/learning opportunity!) Harrison put all the ingredients in a plastic bowl – I couldn’t get any photos as my battery died! We then mixed it all together with a wooden spoon. Harrison carefully counted out the muffin cases and put them in the tin and then helped me to spoon the lovely smooth mixture into the cases. Of course, we just HAD to lick bowl afterwards to check it was ok! (Contains raw egg before cooking so be careful if you’re pregnant, babies under 12 months etc). We put them in the oven for about 20 minutes until cooked. We let them cool and sprinkled some snowy icing sugar on before sampling. They were delicious! Really moist and lovely. These aren’t going to last very long….

What’s your favourite muffin or cupcake recipe?

Kelly has been baking cakes with her toddler, check out her recipe here

Christmas cookies

We haven’t done much baking lately so on Tuesday evening we decided to make some Christmas cookies!
We used a Mary Berry recipe but as usual adapted it 🙂 I’m no cook but these were easy to make and the kids enjoyed helping to mix and decorate!

Ingredients

100g/4oz softened butter
225g/8oz self raising flour
Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated (we improvised & used some lemon juice!)
100g/4oz caster sugar
1 beaten egg
1 tbspn milk

To decorate: 2tbsp lemon juice, 175g/6oz icing sugar

Preheat oven to 190c/gas mark 5
Grease and line two baking trays
Place butter and flour into a bowl and rib with your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add zest of lemon, sugar, egg and milk. Bring together dough by hand and chill in fridge for 30 mins before rolling.
Roll out the dough thinly onto a floured surface and cut out shapes using a pastry cutter.
Place the shapes on the baking trays.
Bake for 10-15 minutes until they’re a pale golden brown and firm in the middle. Leave to cool on a wire rack.
Sieve icing sugar into a bowl and stir in lemon juice until spreadable consistency. Pipe or spread on and finish with silver balls or other decorations.

We used blue food colouring in our icing (and was slightly heavy-handed!) so we dripped it onto biscuits and then decorated it with Christmassy decorations. What do you think?

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For another yummy Christmas cookie recipe hop over to Ellie bear Babi to have a go at her lovely biscuits.
We’re attempting these next week!

Cooking with Kids

I’m not a natural cook. I’m definitely more of a ‘stick it in the slow cooker and hope it’s edible’ kind of girl. However, I do enjoy cooking and so does the other half so we take every opportunity to get the kids involved in cooking.
Cooking with kids, especially two toddlers can sound like a daunting task but it needn’t be. With a little bit of preparation and lots of patience it can be a brilliant and rewarding experience, and a fantastic way to bond with them and make them feel useful.
It’s also an amazing learning and development opportunity.

It teaches:

Numeracy skills – ordering, counting, weighing, measuring, timing
Literacy skills – reading recipes, new vocabulary
Fine motor skills – mixing, stirring, pouring, scooping, cutting
Bi-lateral coordination – understanding how to use both hands together to do a task
Multi-tasking
Sensory development
Learning about food, where it comes from & healthy diets

My youngest isn’t quite 13 months and my eldest is 2.5years so when they ‘help’ it does get rather messy but there’s so much they can do!

Basic skills

Mixing (mix was Alex’s first proper word at ten months!)
Stirring
Pouring
Putting mixtures into cake cases/tins
Spreading icing on cakes/biscuits
Mashing
Cutting (bananas are great to teach cutting skills with)
Sprinkling
Crumbling

You could do simple things like buy ready made fairy cakes or biscuits and use squirty or spreadable icing and all the fancy edible decorations you can but these days!

Smoothies are another great thing to do & a great way of getting fruit into their diet. You just need milk and fruit (bananas, strawberries, blackberries & raspberries are all lovely!) and a scoop of ice cream. The fruits are usually easy enough for kids to cut up or break up and plop in. We love making banana smoothie with chocolate ice cream. Harrison loves pressing the button on the blender and watching it all whiz round.

Building pizzas

Most kids love pizza, but instead of buying one, buy (or make if you’re very clever!) a pizza base and spread on some tomato ketchup or purée, sprinkle on some grated cheese and let them loose! Provide little lots of toppings – chopped meat, peppers, mushroom, pineapple chunks, sweet corn etc. You could even make face pizza!

You could do the same with wraps. My two aren’t massive sandwich fans but love wraps so I give them a wrap and then let them choose their own fillings from bowls of grated cheese, ham, salad etc, and put them together (maybe not so much Alex just yet!)

A couple of months ago my friend sent me a link to a great idea which we tried. Unfortunately I can’t remember the original link to credit them.
Basically we used mini Milky Way bars and stuck smarties on with icing to look
like wheels, then stuck a mini gingerbread man on top. Great fun to make and even more fun to eat!

It goes without saying that safety and hygiene is super important.
Encourage kids to wash their hands before they start and tie long hair back. Talk to them about the dangers of hot
cookers, sharp knives etc. If appropriate, teach them how to handle sharp kitchen equipment sensibly. And of course, never leave them unattended, not even for a second. That’s all it takes for an accident to happen!!!

I will leave you with links to some basic recipes that are great for kids!

Pizza

chocolate cornflake cakes

fairy cake

gingerbread men

Baked Potato Mummy has also written a post about cooking with little ones – check it out here.