Baking with 2 year old

[newmammyof2]

Has anyone tried baking with a 2 year old?

Want to try maybe making some muffins or biscuits with DS - just wondering how successful this might be lol or is he still a little too young

Definitely doable. They can set out the cake cases, stir and tip things from one bowl to another!

Aw great! What would you suggest is nice to make?

Yes, my DCs love baking. I put a wipeable table cover on the floor so we can sit down and mix things together. It's great fun.

Muffins are easy. One bowl for dry ingredients, one for wet, tip into one and stir. Use an ice cream scoop for loading the paper cases.

Yep definitely doable. We make cookies and DD helps with the measuring and mixing and then decorates them. You can make it take aaages if you get them to count everything out (e.g. Could you put 10 chocolate chips in here? And another 10 in here?)

DH makes bread and pizza with her which she enjoys but it's extremely messy!

Fairy cakes or gingerbread men worked well with my twins at that age.

Everyone will need an apron/hair tied back and be prepared for the fact that you'll need to wash your floor afterwards.

The keep trick is to stop them licking spoons and then putting them back in the mixture!

Fairy cakes are great because they can go to town decorating them with coloured icing and sprinkles.

Get your DC to help with counting etc as you measure out ingredients and it's a great learning activity too.

Gotta be honest, at 2, rice crispy buns were as much as my attention-span-of-a-gnat child could master. No harm done, it's nothing that can't be wiped up or cleaned down after. I include you, the child, the dog and the kitchen in that btw. Happy baking!

Oh and we up styled the life outta those rice crispy buns with mini marshmallows and smarties and things. Gave her more to throw around the place and into herself.

I was going to say Reborn even at 3 crispy buns took to long to hold dd's attention!

All great suggestions thanks! Especially the counting part as we're trying to get a grip on numbers and counting now. I'm feeling pretty nervous excited now about it

Brownies are easy too (although the chocolate is seriously tempting) and scones - my DS (2) enjoys making the 'breadcrumbs' with the butter and flour, squeezing the dough, using the cutters and painting on the egg wash

Muffins have been the most successful for us - enough complexity to take more than 5 minutes, but resilient to measuring errors!

I've always let DD put her hands in the mix, and am relaxed about raw eggs. She loves exploring the textures of the ingredients (wet and dry!).

There is a huge mess afterwards (well, it's got less as DD has got older).

We now have a pan balance and set of weights for DD to help with weighing, but that's dedicated - I only got that once she was keen on baking. It's been well used.

Mumsnet 123 biscuits are a good recipe to start with as the mixture is usually quite easy to roll out and toddlers can use plastic shape cutters with it. Fairly quick cook time and cool time, so results are within an hour of cutting.

Tip: cooler the room the better, so toddler gets longer to cut shapes out before the mixture gets too soggy.

I taught baking classes for little ones briefly, we made pizzas, cheese scones, no bake cheesecakes, bear print biscuits, decorated biscuits.

At 2 DD would help me make cakes, scones, Welsh cakes, scrambled eggs, Rice Krispie cakes, risotto....... All sorts!

No bake cheesecake was good. I think we were doing that before two even.

DS liked bashing the biscuits and eating the mixture.