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I love when people ask me for tips about cooking with their kids.  Sometimes I feel really qualified to answer.  Other times, not so much.  But I got excited when someone on Twitter asked me for tips on how to make cooking with her 2 year old less frustrating…

Ingredients:

1 gallon Patience
1 pinch Expectations
Several squirts of Hand Soap
2 dozen kitchen towels or rags
(and maybe a mop)
1 set measuring cups
1 set measuring spoons
1 wooden spoon or silicone spatula
Some inexpensive ingredients, such as water, dry rice, beans or oatmeal
(Or try something that is safe for your dog to lick from the floor)
1 large mixing bowl with a non-skid bottom*

A Few Suggestions:

• If you woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, maybe you should reconsider this activity.  Have a glass of wine and a good night’s sleep – and try again tomorrow.
• If you are new to cooking with your toddler, I would recommend that you start by practicing a few techniques before actually trying to prepare some real food.
• Set up all of your tools and ingredients in advance, so that your young chef doesn’t have to use up her entire attention span waiting for you to get ready.
• To prevent spills of ingredients, I recommend that you do your pouring over nested bowls.  Put the bowl you are pouring into inside a much larger bowl.  That way, if your young chef misses his target, the ingredients are still contained (and not all over your kitchen!)
• * If you don’t have any mixing bowls with a non-skid bottom, you can put a damp dishcloth under the bowl.  This will help to prevent it from sliding off the counter if your over-eager chef stirs a little too hard.

Directions:

1. Get excited and tell your toddler that you are going to play in the kitchen together.  Pretending is the perfect way to start.  Ask your toddler to look at the ingredients and name what you will be making together.  Maybe it’s oatmeal soup or a rice and bean jumble.
2. Bring a stool or chair into the kitchen, so your little chef can easily reach the sink to wash his hands.
3. Wash hands with soap and warm water.  Don’t forget to scritch and scratch the palm of each hand with the fingernails of the other.  You never know what boogers might be under there.
4. Move the stool to the working area (such as the counter or the kitchen table).
5. Use the measuring spoons and measuring cups to measure arbitrary quantities of whichever ingredients you have selected and pour them into a (nested) bowl.  (Don’t forget – if you are using anything like raisins or chocolate chips, put your dog somewhere safe.  It will get sick when it eats those things off the floor!)
6. Be sure to try using a variety of tools to stir these ingredients together (whisks, wooden spoons, spatulas, and even clean hands).
7. Toddlers need to get the feel of how hard to stir.  Know ahead of time that some of your “soup” will slosh out over the sides of the bowl.  That’s okay!
8. Keep your eyes open for any nose picking, ear scratching, or tooth touching and use a happy voice as you bring your little chef back to the sink to wash her hands again.
9. Once you feel like your youngster has the hang of following directions and aiming ingredients over the mixing bowls, you are ready to move on to some real recipes, such as the cornbread below.

Easy Corn Bread

Ingredients:
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup all purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoons salt
3/4 cups canned creamed corn
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 large egg, beaten

Directions:

1. Position rack in center of oven; preheat to 400 degrees
2. Position a mini-muffin pan over your sink and spray liberally with non-stick vegetable spray.  If you don’t have a mini-muffin pan, you can use a regular muffin tin.  Although it’s easier to loosen the cooked muffins when you spray the edges of the muffin wells, you can add muffin papers if your family likes to use them
3. Whisk together cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.
4. Add the creamed corn, butter and egg.
5. Stir just until blended.
6. Spoon the batter into the muffin tin.  You will want to fill each well about ¾ full.
7. Bake until edges begin to pull away from pan sides and a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.  If you are making mini-muffins, the cooking time will be approximately 8-11 minutes.  It will take a few minutes longer for full sized muffins.

CALL THE KIDS:

• Using the nested bowl method described above, kids can measure all of the dried ingredients.
• Scoop the creamed corn from the can
• Crack the egg over a small clean bowl.  This makes it easier to fish out any stray shells before you add the egg to the rest of the ingredients.
• Stir all of the ingredients together.
• Scoop the batter from the mixing bowl and pour into the muffin tin.

Well, how did it go?  I’d love to hear all about it!