All 4 of mine 'helped' to cook from the time they could wield a wooden spoon and stand safely on a step at the counter. The pride on a little one's face as they present their efforts to family is a joy to behold. They all went on to take their turn in producing meals too and became adventurous cooks. Saturday nights were "around the world" meals when we all took it in turns to research a country's cuisine, make something to try and share a bit about the traditional culture. Youngest is 19, the only one still at home, and loves to bake for friends, frequently baking during the night for a lovely surprise in the morning.
That's wonderful, Fiona! Enjoying and appreciating cooking and doing family work together are all such important lessons to learn while growing up. I have often found it very challenging to have my young children helping me cook because of very cramped counter space, so doing it casually and regularly hasn't worked very well for me.
Once I figured out that I needed to teach cooking deliberately and at set-aside times and with simple recipes, rather than just along the way while I was cooking myself, it made a huge difference!
My 3yo bakes with me almost any time I bake, although I don't love baking so it's not every day. . I accidentally used the word "dust" to describe the powdered muffin mix and now she talks fluently about muffin dust and pancake dust, etc. I love it.
I found a flourless chickpea muffin recipe that's surprisingly really tasty, full of protein too. It's my standard postpartum gift because what new mom doesn't need a lot of serious calories? When we make them for us, I don't mind my kids plowing through them because it's not just a bunch of empty carbs.
Gluten free. Easy to make dairy free. Sub any nut or seed butter for the peanut butter if you have peanut or nut allergies. A friend subbed aquafaba and said it didn't work, so I'm not sure about an egg free version. Sub nuts or seeds or sprinkles or whatever for the chocolate chips if you want.
I have to admit that I don't care for chickpeas but this does look yummy! It's so good to have something like this on hand for when someone has an allergy, too.
With muffins, I often use a recipe that includes oats and also sub in some whole wheat flour. Muffins also so often include fruits or nuts; they really can be a great, reasonably filling and nutritious bread for kids, especially, who plow through them, as you say, and then run off and burn off all that energy like lightning!
Two of my girls loves to cook and bake with me. My almost 10 year old can do a lot herself, which has been awesome. But now my 8 year old wants to bake with her. Sometimes it’s lovely. Sometimes it’s stressful. But I love to bake so don’t it with my kids was inevitable 😆
My #1 cooking with kids tip is make it a one-on-one project! We have a "dinner helper" every night who functions as my sous chef and it makes it so much easier to teach and watch over one kid rather than two (or three or . . . you get the idea ;-) at a time. My 8 year olds are learning how to make pasta, flip pancakes, saute veggies in a bit of butter, etc. My 5 year old loves to wash and tear lettuce for salad, cut soft veggies with her own kid-friendly knife (peppers and cucumbers are good beginner knife skills foods), and help with prep work like snapping the ends off green beans. The only time I will let them all "help" at the same time is if we are doing a major job like hulling 20 lbs of strawberries for jam or something fun like decorating cookies; all the rest of the time it is, "One helper and you can all take turns" otherwise I just get too stressed! And that way there's less fighting too!
That is a great tip! Adding routines and organization not just to the actual cooking but to whole gets to cook with you and what they get to do. It's so smart to try to identify what it is that makes something stressful and address it; I think it's probably different things for different people (and in different kitchens).
Yep yep, different people, different kitchens, all important to recognize. Oh, and to tie this back to one of your recent posts, kids who can (or want to) help in the kitchen opens up a nice array of potential gifts for birthdays, Christmas, etc. Aprons featuring their name or their favorite animal! Kid-friendly knives and/or peelers! Muffin tins! Cookie cutters! Lots of fun things that also encourage gaining practical life skills.
Great point! Giving real, useful, but appropriate tools for cooking (or anything else, really) is a very good idea. My 9 and 12 year olds use 6" chef's knives (we have two of these these ones https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000CFDD5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1) for chopping; they *can* use a regular chef's knife, but their smaller hands can control the 6" kind much better. My 6-year-old and 4-year-old use steak knives (they only cut up things like fruit, really) or a bench scraper. With all of them properly outfitted, things go much more smoothly. Even the younger two really are a big help with big chopping jobs like prepping apples for applesauce/pie/apple butter in the fall!
I can't take credit for this idea but someone gave those to my boys and they absolutely adored them. I also think it was a plot to be able to tell them apart 😉(identical twins get a lot of personalized gifts, who knew?!)
I am starting to learn this the hard way! The only time it doesn't end up terrible is if it's the 4 year old one-on-one or the almost 3 year old one-on-one.
Having both of them plus the 1 year old is honestly a disaster (fighting over who can do what job! who can use what utensil! who can sit or stand where! oh no, now the little one is infringing on everyone's space!) and made super me salty towards anyone telling me to cook with my kids. ha. Now I've learned it just cannot work that way. One-on-one it is.
(I'm learning that some of the advice on how to do things with kids -- not you specifically Dixie, just generally haha -- seems to assume this 2, 3, 4 year age gap in kids, where you have one capable child and then a sweet, contained baby or whatever. But dynamics are different in different families..... like having three children within three years, or for other people twins, etc.)
Can you tell cooking with kids at this stage in life is literally one of my biggest stressors? haha
Haley I don't know if Substack will let you see people's emails (I subscribe to your newsletter so maybe?) but if you ever want to talk survival strategies or just commiserate and chat let me know! I have been where you are!
I think you're wise to recognize that it is just not a good situation to let more than one of them help at a time! I'm like you -- I thought I would love baking/cooking with my kids, but NOPE. Super stressful.
Making cut-out Christmas cookies with them was my kryptonite so I actually finally just decided: no more. We didn't do them for 4-5 years.
And then about a year and a half ago, after I had begun teaching my older two how to do basic kitchen stuff and to read a recipe, my son asked me for the recipe and learned how to do them start-to-finish without my involvement. Then my daughter learned, too. It's...amazing.
So I think it's worth teaching them but I think you've gotta do it the way it works for you. Saying "no" to them helping with cooking when the time and circumstances aren't right is a really good thing!
Also just...delaying until they're older, if that's what you need to do.
Story time - during Covid Christmas during 2020 I attempted to make my MIL's gingerbread men (also known as my husband's favorite Christmas cookie) with my kids since we couldn't gather with her. It was a HIGHLY stressful experience, to the point where I told him "Please enjoy these because making them took literal years off my life" 😵💫 But it was a combination of wrong recipe, my first time ever making them, and too many helpers who were all under 6. It just didn't go well and now we stick to simpler cookies when we want to make them together. Lesson learned!
I think there are sometimes just too many variables with a critical mass of little ones around. So many things can go awry that it's good to know your limits! It's not a failure -- it's just good stewardship of your energies!
It's definitely easier for me to cook with my current little ones' help than it was when all my kids were little, largely because I don't have to worry about what my older ones are up to while I'm cooking with the youngers. I really can send everybody out of the room but one or two kids and they're all safe and they can generally handle it emotionally, too.
That was not possible for years and years and years. I don't know how old your kids are now, Amy, but maybe you're getting there or will be getting there soon!
Also, yes, so much parenting advice in general is presuming you have only one or two kids, and that you don't spend every waking moment together already, and that they are biddable and happy and you have a perfect kitchen and you have limitless patience because you have excellent self-care and plenty of money for vacations...I hear you, Haley!
There was one particularly stressful year when the cooking hour became so tremendously distressing for me that I decided to make that a TV hour. Every day, we tidied up a bit at about 3:45 and then at 4 the kids watched a movie for an hour or so while I cooked and drank a glass of wine. It was so completely the right thing to do that year!
Do it NOW because I am about to turn 40 and I'm getting to the point where a glass of wine in the evening will make it difficult for me to sleep in the middle of the night!
This is the season I am in right now, haha! I have 6 under 10... it is beautiful, but I have definitely learned to keep things simple when I let them help me in the kitchen right now! And not to do so at dinnertime :)
"It is beautiful, but I have definitely learned to keep things simple when I let them help me..." Wiser words have never been spoken! We can't hurry growth along, and so when there are lots of small kids around, it's better to just adjust what we can to the reality of, well, have lots of small kids!
I love how simple this recipe is. I’ve been putting off baking with Desi (20mo) even though I dearly love the idea, but this has given me the confidence! I’m going to try the cranberry and white chocolate variation for Valentine’s Day :)
Oh, I can't wait to hear how it goes! My 12-year-old daughter made these last week with my friend's young daughter and both of them enjoyed it very much. I bet Desi will have fun, and you will, too, I hope!
Yes, I think you have to be realistic about what your tolerance level is for kitchen chaos in terms of the child's age! I have made this recipe with my younger kids just for fun, but with my older ones it really was a good introduction to their learning to bake independently. One of the two of them makes these biscuits at least once a week. It's splendid!
My Mom gave me a Betty Crocker Cookbook geared toward school-aged kids. Easy to use. The first meal she and I made together was meal loaf from the book. Then she showed me how to bake potatoes in the oven with the meat loaf. Canned green beans in their own juice finished the meal. It was also the timing and oven sharing concept of thrifty cooking too.
Love this. Cooking and baking with kids is something that is naturally very difficult for me, but I have always acknowledged the value in it. Over the years it has definitely gotten easier with certain guardrails in place depending on ages! I will definitely add this recipe to the "make with little ones" pile. Thanks!
Again, you really put that well. It is that way for me, too -- not naturally easy, but still a good thing that does need to be done at some point for the good of the kids (and the family). So, realistic strategies are the way to go!
All 4 of mine 'helped' to cook from the time they could wield a wooden spoon and stand safely on a step at the counter. The pride on a little one's face as they present their efforts to family is a joy to behold. They all went on to take their turn in producing meals too and became adventurous cooks. Saturday nights were "around the world" meals when we all took it in turns to research a country's cuisine, make something to try and share a bit about the traditional culture. Youngest is 19, the only one still at home, and loves to bake for friends, frequently baking during the night for a lovely surprise in the morning.
That's wonderful, Fiona! Enjoying and appreciating cooking and doing family work together are all such important lessons to learn while growing up. I have often found it very challenging to have my young children helping me cook because of very cramped counter space, so doing it casually and regularly hasn't worked very well for me.
Once I figured out that I needed to teach cooking deliberately and at set-aside times and with simple recipes, rather than just along the way while I was cooking myself, it made a huge difference!
Ok but now I want to see the boy pictures! I'm curious!
Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you! https://thegraphicsfairy.com/adorable-retro-cooking-mom-image/ (scroll down a bit)
Hahahaha you're right
SO weird.
Oh dear! Those are terrible and hilarious 😆
My 3yo bakes with me almost any time I bake, although I don't love baking so it's not every day. . I accidentally used the word "dust" to describe the powdered muffin mix and now she talks fluently about muffin dust and pancake dust, etc. I love it.
I found a flourless chickpea muffin recipe that's surprisingly really tasty, full of protein too. It's my standard postpartum gift because what new mom doesn't need a lot of serious calories? When we make them for us, I don't mind my kids plowing through them because it's not just a bunch of empty carbs.
https://www.ambitiouskitchen.com/flourless-peanut-butter-chickpea-muffins/
Gluten free. Easy to make dairy free. Sub any nut or seed butter for the peanut butter if you have peanut or nut allergies. A friend subbed aquafaba and said it didn't work, so I'm not sure about an egg free version. Sub nuts or seeds or sprinkles or whatever for the chocolate chips if you want.
I have to admit that I don't care for chickpeas but this does look yummy! It's so good to have something like this on hand for when someone has an allergy, too.
Came here to ask for this recipe! Thanks for sharing!
It's like fairy dust for baking!!
With muffins, I often use a recipe that includes oats and also sub in some whole wheat flour. Muffins also so often include fruits or nuts; they really can be a great, reasonably filling and nutritious bread for kids, especially, who plow through them, as you say, and then run off and burn off all that energy like lightning!
Dixie - love this and the intriguing reads you linked! Have lots of thoughts but must get started on breakfast and walk. Will save this for later :)
Thanks, Ruth! I will look forward to hearing your thoughts. I think you will really like the other two pieces, too.
And thanks for reminding me that I need to take *my* walk!
I'll link your post in a special interview article tomorrow (I'll let you try and guess who it might be; you met her at the FPR conference :)
Ooooh, I think I know who it is!! Can't wait!!
Really? I give you three guesses (just putting the final edits in now....)
Tessa Carman?
Although to be fair, you did give me a hint a week or so ago (if I'm right!).
Two of my girls loves to cook and bake with me. My almost 10 year old can do a lot herself, which has been awesome. But now my 8 year old wants to bake with her. Sometimes it’s lovely. Sometimes it’s stressful. But I love to bake so don’t it with my kids was inevitable 😆
Sounds like you are on your way to having several bakers in the house!
My #1 cooking with kids tip is make it a one-on-one project! We have a "dinner helper" every night who functions as my sous chef and it makes it so much easier to teach and watch over one kid rather than two (or three or . . . you get the idea ;-) at a time. My 8 year olds are learning how to make pasta, flip pancakes, saute veggies in a bit of butter, etc. My 5 year old loves to wash and tear lettuce for salad, cut soft veggies with her own kid-friendly knife (peppers and cucumbers are good beginner knife skills foods), and help with prep work like snapping the ends off green beans. The only time I will let them all "help" at the same time is if we are doing a major job like hulling 20 lbs of strawberries for jam or something fun like decorating cookies; all the rest of the time it is, "One helper and you can all take turns" otherwise I just get too stressed! And that way there's less fighting too!
That is a great tip! Adding routines and organization not just to the actual cooking but to whole gets to cook with you and what they get to do. It's so smart to try to identify what it is that makes something stressful and address it; I think it's probably different things for different people (and in different kitchens).
Yep yep, different people, different kitchens, all important to recognize. Oh, and to tie this back to one of your recent posts, kids who can (or want to) help in the kitchen opens up a nice array of potential gifts for birthdays, Christmas, etc. Aprons featuring their name or their favorite animal! Kid-friendly knives and/or peelers! Muffin tins! Cookie cutters! Lots of fun things that also encourage gaining practical life skills.
Great point! Giving real, useful, but appropriate tools for cooking (or anything else, really) is a very good idea. My 9 and 12 year olds use 6" chef's knives (we have two of these these ones https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000CFDD5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1) for chopping; they *can* use a regular chef's knife, but their smaller hands can control the 6" kind much better. My 6-year-old and 4-year-old use steak knives (they only cut up things like fruit, really) or a bench scraper. With all of them properly outfitted, things go much more smoothly. Even the younger two really are a big help with big chopping jobs like prepping apples for applesauce/pie/apple butter in the fall!
Thank you for this recommendation! I was actually considering a smaller chef's knife for them so I will look into this one!
This one keeps its edge pretty well, too!
Oh my goodness, aprons with their name on it!!! Brilliant
I can't take credit for this idea but someone gave those to my boys and they absolutely adored them. I also think it was a plot to be able to tell them apart 😉(identical twins get a lot of personalized gifts, who knew?!)
I am starting to learn this the hard way! The only time it doesn't end up terrible is if it's the 4 year old one-on-one or the almost 3 year old one-on-one.
Having both of them plus the 1 year old is honestly a disaster (fighting over who can do what job! who can use what utensil! who can sit or stand where! oh no, now the little one is infringing on everyone's space!) and made super me salty towards anyone telling me to cook with my kids. ha. Now I've learned it just cannot work that way. One-on-one it is.
(I'm learning that some of the advice on how to do things with kids -- not you specifically Dixie, just generally haha -- seems to assume this 2, 3, 4 year age gap in kids, where you have one capable child and then a sweet, contained baby or whatever. But dynamics are different in different families..... like having three children within three years, or for other people twins, etc.)
Can you tell cooking with kids at this stage in life is literally one of my biggest stressors? haha
Haley I don't know if Substack will let you see people's emails (I subscribe to your newsletter so maybe?) but if you ever want to talk survival strategies or just commiserate and chat let me know! I have been where you are!
I think you're wise to recognize that it is just not a good situation to let more than one of them help at a time! I'm like you -- I thought I would love baking/cooking with my kids, but NOPE. Super stressful.
Making cut-out Christmas cookies with them was my kryptonite so I actually finally just decided: no more. We didn't do them for 4-5 years.
And then about a year and a half ago, after I had begun teaching my older two how to do basic kitchen stuff and to read a recipe, my son asked me for the recipe and learned how to do them start-to-finish without my involvement. Then my daughter learned, too. It's...amazing.
So I think it's worth teaching them but I think you've gotta do it the way it works for you. Saying "no" to them helping with cooking when the time and circumstances aren't right is a really good thing!
Also just...delaying until they're older, if that's what you need to do.
Story time - during Covid Christmas during 2020 I attempted to make my MIL's gingerbread men (also known as my husband's favorite Christmas cookie) with my kids since we couldn't gather with her. It was a HIGHLY stressful experience, to the point where I told him "Please enjoy these because making them took literal years off my life" 😵💫 But it was a combination of wrong recipe, my first time ever making them, and too many helpers who were all under 6. It just didn't go well and now we stick to simpler cookies when we want to make them together. Lesson learned!
Solidarity, sister!
I think there are sometimes just too many variables with a critical mass of little ones around. So many things can go awry that it's good to know your limits! It's not a failure -- it's just good stewardship of your energies!
It's definitely easier for me to cook with my current little ones' help than it was when all my kids were little, largely because I don't have to worry about what my older ones are up to while I'm cooking with the youngers. I really can send everybody out of the room but one or two kids and they're all safe and they can generally handle it emotionally, too.
That was not possible for years and years and years. I don't know how old your kids are now, Amy, but maybe you're getting there or will be getting there soon!
Also, yes, so much parenting advice in general is presuming you have only one or two kids, and that you don't spend every waking moment together already, and that they are biddable and happy and you have a perfect kitchen and you have limitless patience because you have excellent self-care and plenty of money for vacations...I hear you, Haley!
There was one particularly stressful year when the cooking hour became so tremendously distressing for me that I decided to make that a TV hour. Every day, we tidied up a bit at about 3:45 and then at 4 the kids watched a movie for an hour or so while I cooked and drank a glass of wine. It was so completely the right thing to do that year!
The wine during cooking hour is a nice touch! :)
Do it NOW because I am about to turn 40 and I'm getting to the point where a glass of wine in the evening will make it difficult for me to sleep in the middle of the night!
This is the season I am in right now, haha! I have 6 under 10... it is beautiful, but I have definitely learned to keep things simple when I let them help me in the kitchen right now! And not to do so at dinnertime :)
"It is beautiful, but I have definitely learned to keep things simple when I let them help me..." Wiser words have never been spoken! We can't hurry growth along, and so when there are lots of small kids around, it's better to just adjust what we can to the reality of, well, have lots of small kids!
I love how simple this recipe is. I’ve been putting off baking with Desi (20mo) even though I dearly love the idea, but this has given me the confidence! I’m going to try the cranberry and white chocolate variation for Valentine’s Day :)
Oh, I can't wait to hear how it goes! My 12-year-old daughter made these last week with my friend's young daughter and both of them enjoyed it very much. I bet Desi will have fun, and you will, too, I hope!
That recipe is so simple, even I could do it. Thank you. And I think I would wait until the child is six or older. But that's just me.
Yes, I think you have to be realistic about what your tolerance level is for kitchen chaos in terms of the child's age! I have made this recipe with my younger kids just for fun, but with my older ones it really was a good introduction to their learning to bake independently. One of the two of them makes these biscuits at least once a week. It's splendid!
My Mom gave me a Betty Crocker Cookbook geared toward school-aged kids. Easy to use. The first meal she and I made together was meal loaf from the book. Then she showed me how to bake potatoes in the oven with the meat loaf. Canned green beans in their own juice finished the meal. It was also the timing and oven sharing concept of thrifty cooking too.
What a wonderful memory. Baked potatoes are a great idea -- so easy!! And also delicious, thrifty, and nutritious.
Some of my best memories are baking with my best friend when we’re around nine. My mother trusted us for some reason. 😅
That is so sweet. I remember making up a cake recipe at about that age. It did *not* work!
We used to make up drink recipes. They were disgusting.
That happened a lot at middle school parties during truth or dare. Here, drink this!
Love this. Cooking and baking with kids is something that is naturally very difficult for me, but I have always acknowledged the value in it. Over the years it has definitely gotten easier with certain guardrails in place depending on ages! I will definitely add this recipe to the "make with little ones" pile. Thanks!
Again, you really put that well. It is that way for me, too -- not naturally easy, but still a good thing that does need to be done at some point for the good of the kids (and the family). So, realistic strategies are the way to go!