What are your favourite baking and school holiday activities to do with your DCs? Tell Flora for the chance to win a £150 John Lewis voucher NOW CLOSED

[AngelieMumsnet]

With warmer weather still far away, Flora would love to hear about Mumsnetters' favourite baking activities, as well as other indoor activities for you and your DCs.

Here's what Flora have to say: "We know that here in the UK, we're not blessed with the most predictable weather and as the first school holiday approaches and you’re still stuck indoors, it’s not always easy to keep dreaming up activities to keep the kids from climbing the walls that don’t eat into the household budget. Flora is here to offer a helping hand, baking with Flora Buttery is about having a good time, and not making the perfect creations – our all-in-one recipe couldn’t be simpler and needs just 15 minutes prep time, five ingredients and one bowl. Even better when you are all baked out and the tub is empty it can be used for fun, simple arts and crafts activities!"

So, do you have any baking activities which you love to do with your DCs? What do you like to bake? Are there any recipes you follow, or do you prefer to get creative while baking with your DCs?

If you're not a baker, do you have any other fail-safe activities for you and your DCs to do indoors? Maybe you like to work on arty projects? Or perhaps you've invented some games to play together?

Whatever your favourite activities are, Flora would love to hear about them.

Everyone who posts on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where one winner will receive a £150 John Lewis voucher.

Please note your comments may be included on Flora's social media channels, and possibly elsewhere, so please only post if you're comfortable with this.

Thanks and good luck,
MNHQ

We enjoy making pizza dough and decorating pizzas with veg smiley faces. we make simple cupcakes but they always enjoy the decorating part the most.
Other activities we enjoy on wet days are junk modelling, salt dough, sewing and card-making.

I'm not much of a baker so we make easy things like banana bread, blueberry muffins etc. Then we get all the dollies, teddies and the play tea set out and have a play tea party!

My DS is only 2 but has got the baking bug already!
We do little fairy cakes together - he loves every aspect of the process from the mixing, to spooning the mixture into cake cases, drizzling icing on top and of course the eating!

He likes watching me cook too and will help wherever he can, ie. stirring, pouring ingredients into a bowl, passing me things from the fridge etc.

Other indoor activities include painting, playdoh, drawing/colouring, stickers, reading and playing with his flashcards.

DS1 isn't so interested in baking with me, any more, as he considers that he has better things to do, but we still occasionally make a batch of fruit muffins, together. I tend to set him to work mashing bananas for me :o

I do involve him in making our lunches, during school holidays. While he doesn't get much out of baking any more, I do think it's important that, despite SN that make it difficult for him, he becomes competent at making himself a sandwich with a healthy filling, heating himself up some tinned soup etc.

We (me and DS who is 7) like getting outdoors- golf, running, geocaching, National Trust or English Heritage spaces exploring - sometimes we even let DH join us!
Conversely, we also LOVE lazy pj days- watching tv or films, drawing or crafting or just chatting and cuddling. Sometimes we even throw in some tidying much to DS's disgust.
We love to bake on our lazy days- our favourites are oat cookies and banana cake and the best bit is always trying them out!

We love making gingerbread - we use the bbc goodfood recipe online. Also, making vanilla cake and breads - we somewhat cheat here as DS has allergies and it's easier to get mixes free from allergens rather the individual ingredients, Hovis bread mix is a favourite!

Thank heavens mine are now old enough to bake without my help. They disappear into the kitchen and emerge with all sorts of goodies. Not good for my diet.

Ds (3) and I did a lot of baking up until Christmas but not so much recently as I'm trying to cut down! However, we love making muffins and fairy cakes and icing them. I also have a pretty good butter biscuit recipe (thanks Nigella) that's easy and delicious.
We made pizza yesterday afternoon for the first time and we may try some more savoury stuff.

Other than that, in rubbish weather we paint, draw, make things, make forts, play games etc.

Gingerbread men!!! My children (6 and 3) love to bake and ice gingerbread people. We have big and small, boy and girl cutters and they decorate the gingerbread as friends and family (allegedly!). We use "writing icing" tubes and whatever sprinkles etc we have in, in pick dome up from time to time with this in mind.

When we want to get out we often go to museums, often by train to Leeds, Sheffield or Manchester to add to the fun. Lots of space to run around, a trip out and maybe learn something too. We even had a very long day trip to London for the Natural History Museum last year.

DD loves baking. I'm not a great baker so do basic stuff like Nutella cookies and banana cake. We also love making pizza dough, and choosing toppings for the pizza. We always try and get out of the house - even if it's a short walk to our local shop and play counting games, saying the house number, counting birds etc.

We're only just getting started on baking, but DS1 has helped me make banana muffins a few times now - he's enjoyed mashing up the bananas and stirring in the other ingredients, although he still needs help getting the mixture into the paper cases. And because it's a banana cake, we can pretend that it's a bit healthier than other cakes.

The bit he really loves though, is doing the icing and decorating once the muffins have cooled down.

Our favourite things to bake when the Dds were a bit younger were heavy on the decoration side. So I would make pizza dough in the breadmaker, divide them into mini pizzas and they would decorate away with their choice of toppings.

Also cookies - we would make a batch of easy to make cookie dough, and I'd make up a few bowls of different coloured icing and various toppings for decorating.

Now the Dds are a bit older we are on to Victoria sponges, chocolate brownies etc.

Starting to get them involved in helping with making meals, but this seems less appealing

we like to make cheese scones - really quick and easy.The DC get to eat their creations straight away for lunch, and I'm not stressing over too much sugar.

on the odd occasion when I do unclench about the sweet stuff, we like to make flapjacks and rocky road. both are great because you don't have to be exact with ingredients, or worry about perfecting particular techniques, so even small DC can make them pretty much independently.

We love paleo recipes here - using proper butter, no sugar etc. I feel I am teaching my daughter about 'real food' that way.

My daughters favourite pastime however is den making!

Victoria sponge! You just can't beat a Victoria sponge, Latin of jam and cream.

My mouth is watering, the fora makes is so much lighter tHan butter.

My favourite thing to bake are fairy cakes as all kids like them and they're almost impossible to get wrong. Just don't call them a cupcake!

We make a 'beach' indoors out of flour mixed with a little baby oil. I put it inside a small toy box, my daughter gets out her Playmobil people and we build sandcastles with them out of small cups. Its lots of fun, albeit a little messy!

Having visited our daughter in Norway over Christmas, we have now just finished baking our third batch of Norwegian crisp-breads Marvellous! When the children were younger, we used to take out an annual pass to visit the local castles, and had many happy days exploring them and learning the history of the people who lived then.

bakling shortbread is our favourite thing to do on a rainy day

DS and I love to bake, we make cupcakes and then melt cadburys chocolate on top of them and sprinkle the topping with smarties so they set in the chocolate... they don't last long!! We also like to make our own pizzas, somehow they always taste better if you make them yourself.

Cookies, with piped icing and various decorations stuck on make for a leisurely and pleasant rainy day activity, with plenty of creativity thrown in !

We always enjoy making fairy cakes , but they love dressing up

I make gingerbread men with the children and we put sad faces, happy faces and everything in between on them. Also make faces with mashed potatoes peas (for eyes) sausages for lips etc., A lot of laughing goes on when one looks like Grandad!

I love baking cakes but its hard with a nine month old! When she's older I hope to bake fairy cakes with her x

Baking is our holiday hobbie! We always bake buns, flapjack, shortbread, cheesecake and brownies. Other activities are all dependant on the weather.