Cooking with a class of children at school is HARD work. Even in smaller groups, children may get a couple of stirs of the mixture or the chance to throw some ingredients in the bowl. This is why cooking at primary school is rare and why cooking at home is so lovely for children. They get to be involved from start to finish. Here are my top 5 super-duper easy things to cook with kids.
Something very, very easy!
My number one for being very, very easy is bread making - from a ready mix packet I should quickly add! Literally, all you need to do add is water. We made bread a lot when Little Lady was a toddler. Working the dough strengthens little fingers and builds muscles which are also needed for writing, drawing, cutting, painting etc. Working the dough into different shapes and printing into it with simple objects like forks is fun in itself. The best part though is getting to eat warm, buttery bread fresh from the oven. It never lasts very long in our house.
Toast!
Teach your child to make their own toast now and you won’t still be making it for them when they’re a teenager! With a little supervision, children can quite easily load up the toaster and push the button down to cook the bread. Spreading butter is actually a tricky skill but it’s one that children quickly improve on. The toast may be a bit cold by the time your child has finished spreading a topping such as jam, honey or soft cheese, but they never seem to mind!
Friday Night Dinner
So easy is this meal, that I now keep a packet of pizza dough mix in the cupboard for homemade pizzas on Friday nights. In a similar way to the bread, you just add water to create the dough and children can enjoy pounding, pummelling and stretching the mixture. There are also new skills in the pizza making process such as spreading tomato puree and grating cheese. Our favourite toppings included tinned sweetcorn or pineapple and torn up pieces of ham. We tend to fling all the toppings on as we are usually pretty hungry, but you could of course create a face or an artfully arranged pattern.
Easy Chopping
We love bananas and we love ice cream so banana split is a lovely treat for pudding. Bananas are also a perfect fruit for children to practise their chopping on. Chopping with a sharp knife has to be closely supervised. However, bananas can be chopped with the knife from a children’s cutlery set. I know chopped banana isn’t strictly banana split but throw some chocolate spread and sprinkles on top and it still looks and tastes good.
The Show Stopper
This is a Christmas centre piece that looks incredible but is easy to make because it comes in kit form. Making a gingerbread house is one of our Christmas traditions that I’ve mentioned in previous blogs. We love the Lidl kit because the gingerbread looks so glossy and tastes so good. All of the pieces come ready made and are stuck together with icing. A piping bag helps but you could cut the corner off a plastic sandwich bag and squeeze the icing out of that. Mistakes can be easily covered up by sticking sweets over the error and, if the icing drips, it just looks like snow. In our house this is usually a Daddy and Little Lady make, which provides them with plenty of compliments from impressed family.
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