easy recipes to bake/make with curious toddler who wants to help

[theotherfossilsister]

DS is eighteen months corrected and keen to 'help' in the kitchen. I feel a bit mean putting help in quotation marks, but he makes a lot of mess, but also want to encourage him.

We have beetroot in and thinking of maybe doing something with that with him tomorrow, although all the chocolate beetroot recipes I've looked up are a bit complicated and he would probably lose interest and go and empty the recycling onto the floor and try to climb into the bin

Anyone have experience baking or cooking with this age please? Dinner tomorrow is either curry or risotto and it's his day at home with me.

This is the best purchase we have ever made in our house, both my children have love loved helping it the kitchen

Not food, but playdough on the BBC good food website is a fun make.

Pancakes, jelly, angel delight, sponfe cake, buttering toast etc

Just be prepared for mess and to have inedible outputs. My first biscuits with nearly 2yo had too much ground ginger (I'd hoped they'd pour onto spoon to measure but nope, tried to tip it all in) and I had to roll and cut them multiple times while they'd scrumple them back up.
Plenty of patience, it's about the journey and not the destination!

An 18month old....and beetroot ?!?

You are kidding us, right ?

I cooked with my dd from tiny, she's 13 now and awesome at cooking! We loved the "I can cook" book (cbeebies) it's all
Very easy kid friendly cooking and small
Sizes etc. we still make some recipes from it now!

Little traffic light sandwiches! I remember doing them at school 😂

And fruit salad

Both good for those fine motor skills

Wow, thank you for all the replies. I'm definitely going to read through them again more carefully and figure out what to make. I think he might fall out of the kitchen helper tower though. Better to do mixing on the little table.

Ready made puff pastry, roll it out (or buy the sheets) and cut out rounds.

Easy to pop a spoon of jam in, or some chopped apple and raisins, or whatever and make tarts.

Or a big sheet on a baking tray and spread it with pesto, top with chopped veg, bit of ham, cheese - nice savoury tart for lunch

Beetroot!!?!

Are you mad

Homemade mini pizza naans?

Jelly too

Low effort, big reward

https://www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipes/no-cook-playdough-recipe/v7a0hvfx

^^

Off piste but this is a great play dough recipe

Consumption is optional

Child-friendly Chocolate Muffins

Dry ingredients:

1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
3/4 cup vanilla sugar
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Mix together in a large bowl.

Wet ingredients:

1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup sunflower oil
1 large egg

Beat together in a jug, then pour into the dry ingredients and stir to roughly combine. Don't worry about lumps. Put paper cases into a 12-hole muffin tray and divide the mixture as evenly as possible between them. Bake at 180°c for 15 minutes, then remove to a rack to cool.

I used to make fairy cakes with little Gdcs - no proper ‘creaming’ of butter and sugar, would just melt the butter or marge and just let them mix it all up, adding a little baking powder. I’d weigh it all, but let them tip it in, crack the eggs one at a time into a cup and ditto. They loved putting the paper cake cases in the bun tin, but needed a bit of help transferring the mix!

Bread! Make bread together! Toddler can knead the dough like playdough

We got one off marketplace and it is the best thing! Our 15 month old LOVES watching cooking and will play with some dough etc when im baking.

Best thing ever

Have you watched Big Cook Little Cook on CBeebies?

I Can Cook was brilliant - we had the book but there are also loads of recipes on the BBC website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/programmes/b00w1ddl/recipes

I still chop peppers by popping them first!