Fun things to cook with a toddler, that aren’t sweet

[graysor]

I had a successful cheese biscuit ( basically pastry with cheese) making session today with dd 2.2. She surprised me by how well it kept her attention! So I’m after ideas for other thing we can cook together. Ideally savoury things, as she is a bit of a sugar demon, and I’d like her to enjoy cooking things that aren’t just biscuits or fairy cakes!

Any good suggestions?

Cheese scones

Little quiches in jam tart cases

Sausage rolls

Eggy muffins are a hit in our house

Cheese scones are a good one. Or just normal plain bread: let her shape the dough into rolls. We used to love doing this with our mum, especially making little plaited rolls

Pasta making is fun

We've got the gruffalo cook book which has some great simple recipes all of which are healthy. So far we've made

Baked eggs (in the shape if a mouse's head with veg features)
Snakes log pile house (cucumber stuffed with cream cheese and chives)
Spinach and cheese muffins

Each recipe has a cute gruffalo inspired name and lovely illustrations. The recipes are child friendly and really easy to follow.

Pancakes but use homey instead of sugar ... not so bad
French toast
Pizzas

Oh and pizzas too, your little one could add the toppings

Pizza dough is good to roll and shape and choose toppings for. Mine like breaking eggs so they like pancakes for breakfast on a Sunday, the thick ones with a banana and blueberries blended together. In fact ds loves blending and is always up for a smoothie.

Placemarking- DS is 20 months and loves getting involved in the kitchen.

Jamie Oliver sweet potato muffins

mylovelylittlelunchbox.com/?s=pesto+frittata were very popular - in fact it's a great website, would recommend lots of stuff on there, particularly the savoury or reduced sugar muffins.

Things like cheese straws or savoury puff pastry pin wheels.
Bread or pizza involves lots of kneading. You can roll the dough into breadsticks too.
I recently made pretzels with some older children, they went down well but they were quite fiddly.
Get her involved in cooking meals with you, soft things like mushrooms and olives can be chopped with a table knife.
Making fruit smoothies, let her choose the fruit combinations, you could also freeze the smoothie to make ice follies.

Savoury flapjack and cheesy muffins are popular here

Sweetcorn fritters were a hit here.

●Hedgehog bread (or as rolls).

●Savoury bacon and cheese breakfast muffins.

●'Breakfast tots', which are slices of bacon layered in muffin/cake tin (to act like a case) then out wanted, add fried cherry tomatoes halves and fried, diced onion/mushroom, then add beaten egg to it to fill it up and bake in the oven til cooked (around 10-15 mins ~ @170°C fan).

We make pitta bread pizzas around twice a month here.

Some great ideas, thanks!

We’ve done pancakes before, which go down well.

Scones are definitely a goer, and I’m intrigued by doing some fritters of some kind. Must add yeast to the shopping list so we can do breads and pizza.

Thanks, keep em coming!

*if, not out.

We use scissors to snip the 'spines' for the hedgehog bread and use pumpkin seeds for eyes and nose (could also use raisins).

We have the Katie I can cook book which is good for little ones as all the instructions and methods are child friendly eg you snip herbs in a glass with scissors instead of chopping them with a knife

Pizza is a good one - kneading the dough, rolling it out and then making pizza faces with the topping’

Courgette fritters.

Potato gnocchi.

Tuna and sweetcorn fritters are yummy...

Some great ideas here.
I like to just include them in normal meals too. Scrambled eggs is their favourite but also chopping veg (from close to 3 onwards), washing veg, measuring stuff out etc.

Making tomato sauce for the pizza?
Mine were squishing the tinned tomatoes with their hands and sprinkling herbs etc from that age.
My ds used to say they were eyeballs...

Also, have you got her involved in actual meal prep, as well as specific 'baking' sessions? My youngest is about the same age and loves being trusted to shell peas, stir a sauce, dry vegetables after I've washed them, set the table etc. He's just started cutting up soft things like boiled eggs or courgettes using a mini knife, though of course needs a lot of supervision! Montessori has a lot of ideas here, due to encouraging kids to get involved early livingmontessorinow.com/montessori-inspired-food-preparation-for-preschoolers/