Sweet and Salty Marshmallow Squares

For many of us we're halfway through the school holidays already, and boredom may be starting to set in for some of you. Getting the kids into the kitchen to make some sweet treats may be a good way to keep them occupied for a morning or afternoon. This recipe is a nice easy one to start toddlers off, as it has some weighing and measuring, and lots of mixing - both of which the little ones can help with. I used to give my youngest a large bowl of rice krispies to mix whilst I was doing the hot stuff, like melting the marshmallows.

If you're looking for simple recipes to cook with toddlers and pre-schoolers I have plenty more on this blog.

Just like toddlers, these are very sweet, a little bit salty, and very very sticky.

Sweet and Salty Marshmallow Squares

300g marshmallows

100g puffed rice cereal (Rice Krispies)

150g toffee popcorn

150g salted pretzels, roughly broken 

• melt the marshmallows slowly in a saucepan over a low heat, or in the microwave
• stir in the cereal, popcorn and pretzels (reserving a handful of popcorn and pretzels for the top)
• press into a 13"x 9" baking tin, lightly greased with oil, and leave in a cool place (not the fridge) to set
• cut into squares
• eat them quickly, before they go soft!

Simple Baking activity with Preschoolers

Jack has just one week left at Preschool before the summer holiday and starting school in September. He only goes for 3 days in the week which means I have just 1 day left with him to myself, just 1 day left of it being just the two of us, a team, partners in crime. He is a joy to be with, so funny and so happy all of the time, from the moment he wakes up until the moment his head hits the pillow and he falls asleep. On Friday he fell asleep in the car and when we got to the bank I needed to wake him, he opened his eyes, said 'ooh my flip flop has fallen off' and then laughed hysterically.

I'm going to miss him, but I won't miss how exhausted he makes me after a day of constant question asking, chatter and singing. If I ever get the urge to spend a few hours with toddlers and preschoolers though I know that I can go into his Preschool and offer my services, which is what I did last week. I was asked to cover for a staff member and so I offered to do some simple baking - although there was no actual baking involved in this activity but the little ones absolutely loved it.

I had six children at a time to do the activity and to start gave each a tray with a bowl, a coffee stirrer, a small spoon and 3 marshmallows on.

Step 1 - thread the marshmallows onto the wooden stick.

All of the children managed to do this, although some of the 2 year olds need a little help as their little hot hands managed to make the marshmallows rather sticky.

I then gave them some melted chocolate (melted in the microwave and allowed to cool slightly) in their bowls.

Step 2 - spoon the chocolate over the marshmallows.

Some of the children drizzled slowly and carefully whereas others spooned it on as quickly as possible, eager to get onto the next step.

Step 3 - Sprinkles!

This was the really fun part. I took in some 100's and 1000's in a shaker and each child took turns in shaking the sprinkles onto the melted chocolate - they all started off gently with a slow sprinkle which quickly turned into an avalanche!

The marshmallow kebabs were then placed in the fridge to set and then wrapped in a cellophane bag to take home later.

The little ones absolutely loved doing this and I really enjoyed doing it with them, and all the parents were extremely pleased when their children came out of preschool on a boiling hot day asking to eat their rapidly melting chocolate marshmallows!

How to decorate cupcakes when you're 3

Having fun in the kitchen with your kids doesn't have to be stressful, hard work or particularly messy. You don't even need to have any cooking skills as you can decorate ready made fairy cakes, from the supermarket, with ready made butter icing. I baked some cakes and the next day Jack decorated them.  I didn't have time to make icing for a cake I needed Saturday night so bought a tub of Betty Crocker chocolate fudge frosting and Jack used the rest for his cakes. He decorated these all by himself, with no help from me, apart from filling the icing bag and tying a knot it.

Whilst I pottered around the kitchen I left him to it, armed with an icing bag full of frosting and a selection of sprinkles and decorations.

A good tip is to place the cakes on a tray, this way you don't end up with as many decorative balls on your floor!

perfecting his technique

too many sprinkles!

a few more

ta da

and some more

so proud

 

new Peppa Pig rocket cake stand

here goes

ooooooooh

yummy

cheeky!

cute cases from TK Maxx

Bonfire Night Treats

With Halloween now over it's time for bonfires and fireworks so here are some quick and easy treats to that the kids will enjoy both making and eating.

Chocolate Covered Apples

You will need :

Apples
Lollipop sticks
Chocolate flavoured cake covering
Sprinkles

• Wash & dry the apples
• Stick the sticks into the apples almost all the way through
• Melt the cake covering in a microwave on short bursts, stirring every 20-30 seconds
• Dip the apples into the chocolate to  cover completely
• Decorate with sprinkles

Breadstick Sparklers

You will need :

Breadsticks
Chocolate Covered Cake covering
Sprinkles

• Melt the cake covering in a microwave on short bursts, stirring every 20-30 seconds
• Dip the breadsticks into the chocolate - doing it in a narrow container will help to get more of the breadstick covered
• Decorate with sprinkles

Cooking With Your Toddler - Iced Lemon Cookies

This is a recipe from the Ocado website, a very simple one, in fact so simple that we didn't even use the Kitchen Aid. The butter was very soft though as it had been left out whilst we went shopping so it didn't need much beating.

150g Butter
150g Caster Sugar
1 Egg, beaten
Zest of 1 lemon & juice of half 
350g Plain flour

To decorate
juice of half a lemon
icing sugar
sprinkles - we used Dr Oetker Stars, Polka Dots & Soft Shimmer Pearls *

• Beat the butter and sugar until creamy
• Add the egg, lemon juice & zest & beat well
• Stir in the flour until it starts to come together and then use your hands to bring together. (Add more flour if it's too sticky.)
• Wrap in clingfilm & refrigerate for half an hour - or in our case 10 minutes in the freezer

• Roll the dough to about 1/2 - 1cm thick & cut out shapes
• Bake in a preheated 180 degree (C) oven for 8-10 minutes
• Transfer to a wire rack & cool 
• Mix enough icing sugar into the lemon juice to form a thin paste
• Spread icing over the biscuits & decorate

The June Cooking With Your Toddler linky will open on 1st June and close on 30th June. Please feel free to link up your posts with the theme of Cookies & Biscuits. 

Cooking With Your Toddler has now moved to it's own dedicated blog here.

Please vote for me

* We were sent the Dr Oetker decorations for the purpose of a review

Cooking With Your Toddler - June - Cookies / Biscuits

I haven't done much baking with Jack recently so I thought it was time to revive Cooking With Your Toddler. It would be a bit ambitious of me to think that we'll be able to do it every week so I've decided to post a Cooking With Your Toddler post once a month and open a new linky up each month for you lovely lot to include your posts. I'll post a theme for the month and you can link up with your cooking posts along that theme until the end of the month. 

For the month of June the theme is Cookies / Biscuits

You can either post your own recipe or feel free to use one of the recipes in the old Cooking With Your Toddler linkys here. Either way you will need to be cooking with a toddler to join in with the linky. (although if you don't have a toddler a child of any age will do - they don't even have to be yours!) 

Cooking with your Children is a great way to spend quality time together and it doesn't have to be as stressful as you may imagine. For a first timer no bake recipes are a great idea, as well as weighing out your ingredients before you get your child involved. If you want to make cookies without much hassle then you could make the dough in advance and keep it in the fridge until you want to use it.

Cooking With Your Toddler has now moved to it's own dedicated blog here.

Cooking With Your Toddler - Chocolate Peanut Butter Flapjacks

Peanut butter is one of the staple foods in our household and we all love it...well all but the husband...but he does eat it from time to time unknowingly! I use it in cookies, sandwiches and even in curry, and this week myself and Jack are adding it to Flapjacks.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Flapjacks :

100g butter

100g demerara sugar

200g Golden Syrup

150g Crunchy Peanut Butter

250g Jumbo Oats

200g Quick Cook Oats

Topping

100g milk chocolate chips

50g smooth peanut butter

• Melt the butter, sugar, syrup & peanut butter over a low heat

• Stir in the Oats

• Mix well

• Press into a large greased baking tin - mine was a 9" x 13" - tip: put a sandwich bag over your hand & press down, that way it doesn't stick

• Bake in a 180 degree (C) oven for 15-25 minutes, until golden brown
• Melt the chocolate chips and peanut butter in a glass bowl in the microwave for around 1 minute - stirring every 20 seconds until just melted, stir until smooth
• Spread chocolate over the warm flapjack and allow to cool completely & the chocolate topping firms up
• Cut into squares or bars

Chocolate Peanut Butter Flapjacks

Do you have any child friendly recipes you would like to share, please feel free to add them to the Linkys - just click the badge above

Cooking With Your Toddler - Butternut Squash Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Butternut squash cake does sound a bit odd but root vegetables lend themselves very nicely in cakes....beetroot worked really well in my chocolate cupcakes, keeping them lovely and moist. I spotted this recipe and pinned it until this week when myself and Jack made it with a few variations as below.

Butternut Squash Cake

440g Butternut squash, steamed & mashed

250ml vegetable oil

4 eggs

250g caster sugar

250g sultanas

250g self raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

• Beat the squash, oil and eggs together

• Stir all the dry ingredients together

• Pour the wet ingredients into the dry 

• Mix well

• Pour into a large (lined) baking tin
• Bake in a 180 degree (C) oven for approx 40 minutes - make sure it's cooked in the middle by inserting a skewer
• Allow to cool in the tin - I then removed from the tin, took the baking paper off & then replaced into the tin ready for frosting

Frosting

I forgot to get cream cheese so I improvised with cottage cheese - shhhh don't tell my kids!

200g cottage cheese, blended until smooth

110g butter, softened

150g icing sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

grated zest of 1/2 orange

• Beat all the ingredients together until smooth
• Spread over the cooled cake and allow to set in the fridge

The cake was so moist and tasty that it didn't last long - next time I'm going to make it without the frosting so the kids can take it to school in their lunchboxes. It would be really nice with walnuts in but the kids wouldn't eat it then & I'd have to eat it all on my own....I'm sure I could manage it but my waistline wouldn't be too impressed.

Recipes that I've seen for root vegetable cakes use it grated but I think it's much easier to steam and then mash....it saves your knuckles!

Do you have any child friendly recipes you would like to share, please feel free to add them to the Linkys - just click the badge above

Cooking With Your Toddler - American Style Banana Pancakes

Whilst on a holiday to the US a few years ago my eldest two children became a bit partial to American style pancakes. They were quite happy to eat them with just a drizzle of maple syrup but loved them even more with a full American breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausage with the lot smothered in maple syrup...much to my husband's disgust. During our holiday we stayed on a working farm for a few nights where the breakfast each morning consisted of pancakes and some kind of egg dish.

2007 - pancakes on the farm

I've used the recipe for these pancakes ever since and for a while, until weekend sports took over, I would make pancakes and eggs every Saturday or Sunday morning.


Earlier in the week I received an OXO good grips hand held mixer to review so I thought it would be a great opportunity to use it and get Jack involved in making pancakes, ready for Shrove Tuesday.


Banana Pancakes


1 cup plain flour
1 tbsp sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
2 tbsp oil
1 banana, mashed

• Mix all the ingredients together until well combined, but do not over beat/whisk.
• Spoon or pour batter (I find it easier to pour from a jug) into a greased non-stick frying pan around 3 inches in diameter
• When the pancakes are dry around the edges flip them over & fry on the other side until browned

Variations
I like to add a teaspoon of cinnamon and sultanas. You could also try blueberries or fruit puree.

The OXO good grips handheld mixer is great for children to use in the kitchen, a good (& safe) alternative to using an electric hand mixer. It's easy to turn the handle (as you can see from Jack's demonstration). The beaters are elevated so that they can still turn even when the whisk is resting on the bottom of the bowl, and there is a release button so that the beaters can be taken off for easy cleaning - or licking!

I was sent the hand mixer to review.

Cooking With Your Toddler - Fruity Crumble Pizza

A couple of weeks ago we made a baked bean and fish finger pizza inspired by Jenny at Mummy Mishaps. We then went on to have a conversation about various pizza toppings that we could try out and I recalled the time that I went for a lunchtime buffet in Pizza Hut in America where they didn't just have savoury pizzas they also had dessert ones too. Myself and Jack have attempted to recreate these sweet pizzas here using a regular pizza base that I have previously posted here.

Strawberry & Blueberry Crumble Pizza

Pizza base

Fresh or frozen sliced strawberries & blueberries

Crumble topping - I used this recipe, alternatively you can used a store bought crumble topping

• Make the pizza base and roll out onto a floured surface to the desired size, as thinly as possible

• Bake in a 180 degree (C) oven until lightly baked, but not browned
• Cover the base with the fruit 

• Sprinkle over the crumble topping

• Bake in the oven for a further 20-30 minutes until the crumble is lightly browned

• Serve warm with custard

I also made an apple version using cooked Bramley apples with sultanas, a dash of cinnamon and golden syrup.