Our Kids Kids of Our Future

If you have a wet day looming ahead of you, why not get the kids involved in a spot of cooking? I don’t just mean the actual cooking itself but the planning, the shopping, the cooking, and of course the clearing up!

Get the cookery books out or get them searching on the internet for recipes on sites like the Schwartz one. Make them responsible for making the shopping list but carrying out a sneaky check yourself will avoid tears and tantrums when the vital ingredient is found to be missing at a crucial point. If you want to help their maths skills, allocate a budget and use the supermarket website to help them cost their recipes. Going food shopping with your children doesn’t have to mean frayed tempers, especially when you are not trying to do a week’s shop for the whole family. Let them choose what they need; they may be surprised at what things cost!

Whether they are capable of cooking the whole meal themselves will depend on their age and experience. Do your best not to interfere unless you see an accident about to happen. Yes, there will be mess but since they are going to be the ones doing the clearing up that may focus their minds on keeping things reasonably tidy.

Pizzas, spaghetti bolognese, homemade burgers, and pancakes with a savoury filling all used to be favourites when my kids started cooking. Apple crumble is an easy pudding if they are determined to actually cook a pud. Meringues too are a winner and can be topped with whipped cream and whatever soft fruit is in season. If they are not too bothered about the cookery element of the pudding then a fruit salad or a no-cook cheesecake are both easy to make.

Finally don’t underestimate the time that all of this will take. This is not an activity to be embarked upon if you have to get one child to the dentist at 1.00 and the other to ballet at 4.00!

Children love to cook and to bake and with the school holidays about to coincide with some inclement summer weather what better way to keep them occupied on a rainy day? With vegetarian recipes and complicated Greek recipes sometimes a turn-off to kids’ sense of fun, it’s advisable to stick with baking.

The age of your children will dictate the amount of supervision required and it goes without saying that children should never be allowed to use sharp knives and hot ovens without an adult keeping a sharp eye open.

A favourite of my children when they were young was chocolate fridge cake. Although no actual baking is required it still seemed to satisfy the cook in them. There are variations on the recipe although all involve smashing up digestive biscuits, melting chocolate and mixing together with syrup and butter. Whether you add dried fruit will depend on your taste buds. Kept in the fridge it will be fine for at least a week.

Fairy cakes are another favourite with children. Although part of the fun when I was a child was licking the cake mix from the bowl, nowadays concerns about salmonella from raw eggs makes this a no-no. The cakes are easy to make and it can be great fun deciding how to decorate them. With a bit of food colouring, smarties, jelly beans and hundreds and thousands the possibilities are endless.

If this all seems a bit too complicated for your children (perhaps because they are too young) then the age-old favourite chocolate crispy cakes may be more to your liking. Again no actual baking is required although, since the chocolate has to be melted, adult supervision is still required.

Jam tarts are always popular and even if pastry making is not your idea of fun you can always cop out and buy it ready made from the shops. Your kids won’t judge you and will still have fun rolling it out!