Kids in the Kitchen – Diary of a First Child

Sometimes as a parent you can do everything ‘right’ – eat the right stuff in pregnancy, breastfeed your newborn, go through a dozen new carpets thanks to the joys of baby led weaning – and still, your four year old prefers pasta with cheese over the sashimi she guzzled down happily while weaning. It’s a challenge I’m sure even the best organic-food-feeding parents face sometimes, so here are a few ideas for introducing – or reintroducing – a variety of foods to our ever changing offspring!

Italian

My small one loves pasta – so Italian classics like lasagne are great to batch cook when you have a spare afternoon, then they can be frozen down in portions and cooked for a quick but healthy dinner on busy weekday evenings. This recipe by Mary Berry might seem like it has a lot of preparation, but honestly, the majority is just waiting time while the lasagne sets. Lasagne is a great way to incorporate some hidden vegetables into your child’s diet too, add chopped onions and peppers to the tomatoes and they’ll be getting a tasty and secretly nutritious meal that they’ll love.Read more: Adventurous Foods the Kids Will Love

Fun Ways To Celebrate Winnie The Pooh Day

Home / Kids in the Kitchen / Fun Ways To Celebrate Winnie The Pooh Day

January 19, 2016January 20, 2016 by Luschka

Today was National Winnie the Pooh day, and my girls and I spent the day celebrating that willy, nilly, silly old bear.

Fun Ways To Celebrate Winnie The Pooh Day Winnie the Pooh has a very special place in my heart,because my mom used to love Winnie the Pooh, and we’ve visited Pooh Corner and Pooh Sticks bridge in Ashford, Kent, a couple of times, one of them to release a lantern after my mom died.

My kids love Winnie the Pooh too. Ameli’s first cinema experience (that wasn’t mum & baby cinema, and was in fact something actually for children) was Winnie the Pooh – and then there was her 2nd birthday party too… so you see – lots of reasons to love Winnie the Pooh and commemorate Winnie the Pooh day.

1. Winnie the Pooh Playdough

Fun Ways To Celebrate Winnie The Pooh Day

I used this playdough recipe, but doubled it and left out the cocoa powder, then split it into three parts for yellow, blue/grey and pink. I gave the girls a set of Winnie the Pooh cookie cutters and off they went

2. Make Honey Cookies

Fun Ways To Celebrate Winnie The Pooh Day

These honey cookies are so delicious! They are superbly quick to make, and the kids like squishing them down. We left these plain, but my favourite is topped with glace cherries – the kids like them with chocolate.

3. Tigger Hop Game

Fun Ways To Celebrate Winnie The Pooh Day
It’s been so rainy and grim the last few days and we’re trying to get over and away from all colds and sicknesses so we decided to keep our fun and games indoors. With apologies to the neighbours downstairs, I put X’s on the floor with a start line and a finish square. The girls got to hop up and down the hallway from X to X, just like Tigger. This game was especially loved because I spend half my life telling them to STOP STOMPING!

4. Pooh Bear Picnic

Fun Ways To Celebrate Winnie The Pooh Day

If you go down to the woods today… we won’t be there, because we were staying indoors, as I said above. But we had to have a teddy bears picnic, and it had to include a lot of honey! So we made honey comb, honey muffins and honey cookies. And they were all delicious!

5. Quizzes and Puzzles

Click on these printable worksheets to download and enjoy them!

Happy Winnie the Pooh day!

Do You Wanna Build A Snowman? Disney Frozen Olaf Cake Pops

Home / Cooking / Do You Wanna Build A Snowman? Disney Frozen Olaf Cake Pops

July 2, 2014July 2, 2014 by Luschka

The Frozen fun continues here and today we made Frozen Olaf cake pops. I made my gran’s no flop cake a few days ago, but didn’t have time to do anything with it. I made some icing, and put the whole lot in the Thermomix to make it into cake pops. This morning we covered our cakes in simple icing – icing sugar and water – and left them to dry. We could have used fondant icing or white chocolate to cover them ‘perfectly’ but I thought it was sweet enough as is, really. Next up I mixed icing sugar and food colouring to make the noses, ears and buttons.

Once the icing was dry, I put everything out with an invitation, straight from the movie. Ameli asked ‘Can we eat them now’ and I said, no… you have to ask something else. She looked for a moment and with a big grin said, “Do you want to build a snowman?”

With all the parts done, building the snowman didn’t take terribly long, but it was fun. We put them on a tray of marshmallows before tucking in to it for desert. Yum fun. So… do you wanna build a snowman?

(It was mentioned to me recently that our pictures and projects aren’t as fabulous as other bloggers, and perhaps I should make a ‘blog’ version of things rather than photographing what my children have done. That kind of defeats the purpose, as far as I am concerned. I’m a real mum, with real children, doing real crafts. We’re happy enough!)

The Carrot Cake Catastrophe – Stories And Cake Recipe {Book Review}

Home / 4-5 / The Carrot Cake Catastrophe – Stories And Cake Recipe {Book Review}

March 14, 2014March 16, 2014 by Luschka

One of my friends told me once that she loved my blog, because I don’t post perfect crafts and that makes her feel like a normal mama when their crafts and projects don’t come out perfect. Well, this one is for everyone who ever has not-as-planned-cakes.

The Carrot Cake Catastrophe - Stories And Cake Recipe {Book Review} We received The Carrot Cake Catastrophe by Elizabeth Dale (Author) and Gemma Raynor (Illustrator) from Paragon a few months ago as part of the Paragon Book Buddies project and today we decided it was time to go read it.

Instead of making it into a standard round cake, however, we poured the cake dough into gingerbread man shapes, since our PlayLearning theme this week is around the human body.

Well, it didn’t really work out. The dough is way too moist and the resulting cake way too crumbly for it to work that way. It was still absolutely delicious though. So our cake may have turned out a bit of Catastrophe too, but it was still way, way better than Grandpa’s cake from the book.

In this story, a little girl and her grandfather decide to make a cake for her mama’s birthday. That’s all fine and well, but with his glasses on Grandpa can read the instructions, but not identify the ingredients, so he ends up adding soap instead of butter, and so on. Yum. They head into the garden for fresh, juicy carrots, and stir them into the batter – without grating or chopping! It’s a recipe for disaster, for sure.

In the end the birds eat the cake – apparently they don’t mind the soap – and Mama saves the day with a previously baked cake.

At the end of the book there’s the recipe Grandpa and the little girl followed, with instructions, so you can make it at home too.

It’s a very basic carrot cake, making it ideal for little bakers. Even though I’m a very proud and happy Thermomix owner, I think it’s essential that Ameli and Aviya learn to cook the ‘old fashioned’ way, including weighing, measuring and a bit of elbow grease.

The sign of a great children’s book for me is when the girls remember it later. We had to walk to the shop for cream cheese for the icing, and Ameli laughed suddenly, saying she’s glad we didn’t put soap in our cake! She asked me what ‘bitter’ meant (I said it would probably taste bitter from the soap), and asked about the meaning of other words… I love when they learn without knowing they are.

An all round lovely story, great for preparing for birthdays as we are this week – can’t believe Aviya is coming up for two! – and just a bit of fun and a laugh. Lovely.

The Carrot Cake Catastrophe - Stories And Cake Recipe {Book Review}

Making Chocolate With Disney Cakes And Sweets

Home / 1 - 2 / Making Chocolate With Disney Cakes And Sweets

October 21, 2013October 24, 2013 by Luschka

I love a good recipe book. Actually I love going through a recipe book and gleaning great ideas to adjust and adapt to our family’s way of cooking and eating.

People often comment about how much I do with my girls, and how busy we always are, but the truth is, a lot of it comes from outside inspirations – like this morning: we made Fruity Chocolate Chunks from Issue 1 of the Disney Cakes And Sweets Collection. It was a fun activity I probably wouldn’t have thought of on my own.

The girls had a lot of fun with it. We didn’t have a single one of the ingredients in the original recipe, but they recommend substitutions too, so we made milk chocolate with hazelnuts and candied orange peel.

I used my Thermomix to temper the chocolate to a perfect 37 degrees Celsius, which was also ideal because it means the chocolate never got too hot for the girls to handle.

While the chocolate was doing it’s thing, I gave Ameli the job of crushing the hazelnuts. I could have done it in seconds in the Thermie (or a food processor), but I decided to stretch the activity as long as I could. I put the hazelnuts into a cake pan and gave her a mallet, covering it with a napkin and let her hammer it. An easier option would be put it all in a ziploc bag and hammer it that way, but the girl had fun anyway.

Next up, we sprinkled orange peel over the hazelnuts and mixed them together in a silicone tray before pouring the perfectly tempered chocolate over it.

While the kids licked the chocolate off the spoons and bowl, I popped it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

A little while later, we had perfect chocolate snacks, easy, simple and fun. And they’d make lovely gifts too!

There are a few more recipes from issue 1 that Ameli’s asked if we can try, as well as Winnie the Pooh icing guides and a Mickey Mouse cookie cutter, both of which Ameli can’t wait to use! I’m sure you’ll see more of our adventures in baking and sugar craft soon!

Festival of Food Carnival: Child Tested Recipes

Home / Carnivals / Festival of Food Carnival: Child Tested Recipes

May 9, 2013May 9, 2013 by Luschka

It’s Festival of Food time, and I’ve decided to share our Frozen Yoghurt recipe with you over on my new Keeper of the Kitchen blog.

As part of the carnival, my co-host Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama shares Coconut Milk Popsicles, a super easy creation that is customizable. Seems Jennifer and I have similar ideas on yummy healthy summer snacks for our little people!

Lindy over at the Poppy Soap Company shares some super tasty, super easy Granola Delight Bars inspired by her sweet son. Don’t these just look perfect for lunch boxes and lazy afternoons spent picnicking?

Mercedes at Project Procrastinot shares a comfort-food recipe sure to be a future family favorite. Don’t miss this Grown-Up Mac & Cheese for You and Baby to Love. I wonder if this could convert my I – don’t – like – cheese – sauces husband?

Finally, Jorje at Momma Jorje has fun throwing together Monster Smoothies with her girls. The key is in the flexibility and you can use pretty much whatever you have available.

Do you want to join us next month, when we’ll be talking Summer Smoothies and Mocktails. If so, follow our Facebook page to find out when the call goes out!

Festival of Food Carnival: Child Tested Recipes

Do you have previously published child-loved recipes? Share them in our linky below!

Easy Peasy Meringues Recipe

Home / Find Me On The Web / Easy Peasy Meringues Recipe

March 9, 2013February 26, 2013 by Luschka

We did some baking together recently for the first time in ages. This not-very-healthy, but yummy and super fun for little people recipe is great for engagement in the kitchen!Read more: Easy Peasy Meringues Recipe