I absolutely love baking and cooking with Ameli. It’s something we do regularly enough, and it’s fun for both of us, most of the time. While I don’t tend to use ‘dumbed down’ recipes specifically on her behalf, it is sometimes easier if I’m just looking for an afternoon activity for us to use a child friendly recipe that has few ingredients and little effort.
We came across the Little Cooks Collection, featuring Dora the Explorer and decided we’d try out the recipes. You subscribe and receive two magazines a month, complete with recipes, activities, and a child’s kitchen set to collect.
The first recipe was for Banana Muffins, so here they are with our take on it:
This recipe is supposed to be for four muffins. Four seemed a low number to turn the oven on for, so we immediately doubled it and somehow ended up with 11 muffins – no one was complaining!
Ingredients:
- 2 bananas
- 80g soft brown sugar (although we used white as that’s what we had)
- 4tbsp rapeseed oil (that’s 60ml)
- 2 small eggs or 1 large one
- 130 ml (1/2 cup) milk
- 200g self-raising flour
(I think next time I’ll add a pinch of salt too, to deepen the banana flavour.)
Instructions:
- Peel and mash the banana in a bowl
- Mix in the sugar and oil
- Add the egg
- Pour the milk and stir together
- Add the flour and stir
- Spoon the mixture into your Dora muffin cases (we only had four so used paper for the rest – but the silicone muffin cases are excellent and I’m going to look out for another copy of the first book so we can have another set of the silicone muffin cases which come with the 99p book.)
- Bake for 15 – 20 minutes at 190C/365F/gas mark 5
The book also recommends adding either 50g of chopped nuts, blueberries or apple pieces. I think that can only add to the flavour so we’ll try that next time. Something else that works well with banana is coconut, so we could try that too.
Flavour-wise this is a really basic recipe and I do think salt could bring out more of the banana flavour, but it’s perfectly suitable for children and packed in an air-tight container makes a lovely breakfast for the next day too.
Simplicity-wise, however, there couldn’t be an easier recipe for a two-year old to follow with Mama’s help – older kids will need even less help.
Find out more from the Little Cooks website, where you’ll find information on subscribing, all the freebies you’ll receive and you can see what the inside of the magazine looks like too. We are loving the Little Cooks series, and highly recommend them!
