Top tips for cooking with kids
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Preparation is your friend. The more prepared you are the less likely someone is to tip flour on the flour or eat all the butter when you're not looking. Get all the ingredients out of the cupboard before you bring children up to the kitchen counter. For very little kids you might want to weigh ingredients first, but for reading age children reading numbers on a scale can be fun. Turn your oven on straight away and grease and line tins beforehand if you know your little one won't be able to hold back when they get started.
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Aprons and short sleeve t shirts will minimise how mucky kids get when they are cooking.
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Let it go. The more you try and keep it neat and tidy the more things seem to spin out of control. There will be mess, that's inevitable. If possible, try to enlist kids in the clean up crew as well.
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Little eating piles of an ingredient like raisins or chocolate chips can avoid the ingredients being picked out of the mixing bowl. It doesn't have to be a lot, a few next to the bowl can be enough to distract from the main event.
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For physical kids try dough. Pizza dough is great for little ones with lots of energy. It's tactile and really won't spoil if it's chucked around a bit. They'll love the squishy feeling and the end result is pretty good too.
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Keep it fun. When it doesn't go to plan it can be easy to get stressed, but it can be helpful to make a joke of it and to teach kids how to turn things around when they go off script.
Don't throw it away. Missing ingredients can be added at the last minute - mostly. Dropped things can sometimes be salvaged and kids won't bat an eyelid if it's wonky.
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Happy cooking!
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