Cooking with Kids
Many of today’s great chefs and cooks, when asked how they started cooking, pay tribute to the times when, as youngsters, they helped their mum or grandma in the kitchen. Baking with your kids can be so much fun and yes, it can get messy, but encouraging a child from an early age to help you do simple tasks in the kitchen can set them in very good stead for the future.
While very few will actually go on to be Michelin starred chefs, cooking is a basic skill that everyone should learn. We all know someone who claims that they can’t boil and egg, and this person will almost always say that when they were little the kitchen was their mum’s domain and they were shooed out whenever there was anything ever being cooked or baked.
Children have traditionally always with helped with cooking, and we hear tales from years gone by when they got to stir the Christmas cake or pudding and help with preparations. This has all changed over the last generation as gadget and appliances have taken over, and most teenagers admit that the only things in the kitchen they are happy to use is the microwave.
If you made the mistake of shooing your kids out of the kitchen, chances are they won’t be great cooks, and so the trend continues. Make the time to bake with your children, and you will be surprised how much you enjoy it. Start off with simple recipe ideas like crispy cakes. Melt the chocolate yourself but let the children stir in the crispies and put them into the cases.
By allowing a child to measure out ingredients you are also helping them with their maths, and include them in the process as much as you can. One of the easiest things to make is a simple sponge cake, and under your supervision, they can do everything bar put it into the oven and get it out again.
Once they are a little bit older you can move onto pies and other pastries. Rolling out pastry is something that kids love to do, and seeing a pie coming out of the oven that they have created is a big thrill for any kid. Even if you are cooking something they can’t help with, let them watch you and explain what you are doing. Before long they will be helping you and you can spend many a happy hour cooking with your children.
