It’s a very picture light post today. I wanted to talk a little about cooking with children.. I am by no means an expert on this subject. All of my observations are based on one cooking session with one child and what I remember from cooking while growing up, but I wanted to share what I learnt.

You may recall this article I posted a few weeks ago on the Friday round up, about cooking with children. Of course it’s going to be messy, but it’s fun, and what’s more important than that.

Now, I was baking cookies with an almost 4 year old, so there are a lot of topics I can’t even go in to right now. When can they use a knife? When can they take things in and out of the oven? When are you happy letting them use the stovetop? All things I would like to eventually explore, there’s nothing more exciting when you’re a child than cooking an entire dinner, all by yourself doubly so.

Since she wasn’t quite up to scaling out yet I had that all done and ready, it was important here to have my mise en place as ready as it could be, I didn’t want to get distracted, or have to stop the process midway through so I could finish off preparing.

We got her all prepped with an apron, luckily I had a couple with adjustable neck lengths so we could shorten it, it meant it was a full length apron, practically touching the floor, but well, we did get covered in flour so maybe that was necessary.

I chose cookies as aside from being quick and simple we could dig in with them with our hands.. Sure that’s making it even messier, but what’s more memorable than getting wrist deep in cookie dough.

Not many pictures were taken, as, well… I was getting my hands dirty too, and having far too much fun to stop and step away even for a moment.

Butter and sugar was “squished” together, adding the eggs and vanilla made it too slimy for her tastes or Momma had to step in and help. All the flour and baking powder was added and a big ball of dough formed “just like play-doh.”

She rolled it out… I may or may not have been adding some pressure to the sides while she moved the pin back and forth *whistles and looks innocent.*

Then came the really fun part! Cutting them all out. Since we are who we are we have a whole shelf dedicated to cookie cutters, we picked some of the bigger,simpler shapes and let her loose! A star, a bear, cupcake, ice cream cone, flower, butterfly even a fleur de lys! You can tell she was a fan of the ice cream cone.

I had intentions of icing them, but time flew away. We managed some cupcakes which were a little more complex, she mostly held the spoon and “stirred” while I stirred, but they turned out beautifully, and then she squeezed the piping bag while I directed it when we decorated them.

Both the cupcakes and the cookies went down superbly, I had a fun time making them, and hopefully the kid did too!

What’s you’re favourite experience cooking with kids?