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

Next on the cooking agenda is leek & potato soup, followed by thai green chicken curry.

Typically, my DDs (age 2&4) love to make cupcakes, fairycakes or cookies. I try to choose simple recipes so they can get involved in the weighing and mixing. They routinely like to help with main meal preparations, putting things in pans etc. My girls both love all crafts so I often get out the pens or paints whenever they are in the mood to get arty. Sticker books are also a hit, and I try to get ones themed to a particular holiday (e.g. Christmas or Easter) to we can talk about the meaning of that holiday at the same time.

Choc chip cookies and flapjacks. Yum yum.

Creativity rules in my kitchen, cup cake and biscuit decorating involving lots of icing and sprinkles is a favourite, but making new muffin flavours is a close second - carrot & caramel muffin anyone!!

I love to create original recipes, I used to help my Mum as a child & now I love the little ones in my family to do the same with me. It's not just fun for them but a learning experience for when they're older

our speciality is yoghurt cake well its not actually yoghurt cake its just we have a yoghurt and then use the tub as a measuring guide, its great fun and the kids pick up the ingredients really quickly

homemade bread, chocolate chip muffins are our favourites, however I do find that they are keen to start but about half way through they get bored and go off to play with toys and I end up finishing off... kids!

My children love to cook. My DS, aged 2, loves to 'make' as he calls it :-). We were a bit bored yesterday morning due to the rainy weather, so we made bread (he loves to play with the dough) and biscuits - he likes to roll out the dough and use the biscuit cutters.

DD, aged 7, likes to cook, as long as she doesn't get her hands dirty (she's got that obsession from my husband). She's been adding ingredients to homemade tomato sauce, so sprinkling in salt, herbs, sugar etc. and seems to really enjoy the responsibility. She likes to weigh ingredients and mix them into the bowl. She's pretty decent at cracking eggs too and doesn't freak out when it goes a bit wrong.

Being able to cook and understanding where food comes from (i.e. ingredients and not from boxes/the freezer etc.) is incredibly important.

I love baking with DD - biscuits, cakes, muffins, shortbread. It's our favourite thing to do together and we get a tasty treat at the end of it. She's not so keen on making savoury dishes though (don't know where she gets that from, oh yes that would be me!)

I've always cooked and baked with my children, right from them being tiny. This started with simple things such as them stirring the ingredients and helping with the decorating, leading to them cooking entire meals as they've grown older. This has stood the oldest two in good stead, as they are now cooking confidently at uni.

Baking...always trying new recepies!

I loved baking with my son and he loved it too! Apart from the bit where the stuff is made and there is loads of cleaning up to do because the kitchen is covered in flour and every single utensil has been used (!) but he is already claiming to be bored and ready for the next lot of entertainment! eek! Jokes aside, when he got older we'd make proper meals from scratch sometimes, picking a receipe, shopping for it and then cooking something new. He didn't always want to eat the results, but I did and it was a good thing to see how things are done!
Other rainy day activities...well as well as colouring, making things, sticking, painting, face paints, we'd sometimes even do facepacks! We made dens out of chairs and blankets, we played board games. But mostly we'd just go outside whatever the weather, we're outdoors people!

we have weekend boxes to help entertain us when its cold and wet, there is something to make & bake & learn about in them

We love baking anything (DCs age 4 and 2). Especially gingerbread men and mini muffins. We like trying out new recipes. Also love making our own pizza (which must have pineapple on for DD and olives for DS)

My kids like to make fairy cakes - they like it best when they get free rein with the decorating!! They're so quick and easy to make, and the boys feel so proud that they've made something themselves!

In the last few days ds1 (3 yrs old) and I have baked carrot and apple muffins, and decorated them with melted chocolate and chocolate sprinkles. He loves stirring, adding ingredients that I have pre-weighed, putting the cases in the baking tray, and of course the decorating, especially throwing sprinkles over everything the cakes.

We have also made vegetarian sausage rolls, rolling out premade pastry, mixing all the filling ingredients together, and... then he loses interest and leaves me to finish off. But at least he enjoys eating them when we are done, and I freeze a lot, so he has many meals from it too.

Other activities include painting, using shaped animal sponges, hands, fingers, brushes at times.. Playing with play dough, using cutters or just our hands.

As he gets older and his attention span and listening skills improve I will include him in making meals as cooking from scratch and understanding ingredients and flavours is a valuable life skill.

love to make cupcakes, choc chip muffins or macarons if we are feeling adventurous!

We love to bake shortbread, cookies, rice krispie cakes and pizzas. The kids also love helping to chop the veg up for our winter stews!
As long as it's dry, we also like to wrap up warm and head to the park!

We love to bake cookies! Although I enjoy cooking in general anyway.

Indoor activities include reading lots of books and playing hide and seek.

Dc and I have started to make pizza together. The challenge is to stop him just eating the raw dough. He loves shaping the dough & if we feeling a bit adventurous we'll make pizza shapes- triangle, square etc. I'm tricking him into learning while cooking.

We do lots of baking. dds these days are all pretty competent cooks and don't need much help. Now all that early cooking together is really paying off.

Favourites this week have been cheesy bread rolls, and gingerbread tree decorations with stained glass windows in the middle made with crushed up boiled sweets.

I realise that it's a bit late for making Christmas tree decorations, we bought the ingredients a month ago but only got around to it this last weekend!

we love to bake brownies and watch movies with hot chocolate

My son loves making fruit scones, cheese scones, and flapjacks. We tend to follow simple recipes, though we pretty much remember the aforementioned recipes by heart.

My DCs and I enjoy cooking together and baking is our favourite activity. We like looking at recipes for very easy things like fairy cakes and pancakes to cakes that take a bit longer. We also love making homemade pizza, I am Italian so I use my own recipe and the DCs choose the topping.

I work in a children's home so we're always baking! Gingerbread houses at Christmas went down a treat. I've had a request for a gluten free cheesecake next :)