Can one make mince pies with the help of a 2 year old, or is this just foolishness?

[tigana]

That's it basically.
I would like to bake some mince pies this year.
If I can do this with ds, this will increase the number of timeslots in which this 'project' could take place.
But will it be a nightmarish experience of droppped butter, spat-out mincemeat and flour-coated child/mother/dogs/kitchen. Resulting in no actual edible mince pies...?

What about making the pastry in advance? You could then hand a wodge to child to roll out/chew/cover in dog fluff etc while you did the real ones...

I do - mine is now 2.7, but we've been doing this sort of thing for quite some time now. We've got a Pampered Chef mini muffin tin and shaper - which means that you don't have to roll out the circles, just press in pastry with the wooden tool - ds loves doing this. I top them with small pastry starts - bit hit and miss getting them in the right place, but ds enjoys helping.

No it'll be great.

To minimise mess I used to make the pastry while sitting on the floor with a big sheet under me. Seperate bowls so we ended up with some edible pastry. I than used to roll otu the pastry on a large chopping block (still on the floor) and dd had a small board for her pastry. then she either helped me fill my mince pies or just made her own mess.

You could do teh same at the table with a large sheet under the table

But yes you will both get covered in flour.

i made some recently with DD#3 who is 2 and was pleasantly surprised how well and tidy(ish) she was helping me.....only had 1 minormishap where she squeezed one together a bit....i done my best to straighten it out but looked terrible.........turned out to be the best 1 of them all

baking with toddlers is all about the fun and mess if too bad get ur DH to clean it up on grounds you got the 'messy' part lol (even though best bit) IYSWIM