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

If I'm baking with 3 year old dd I tend to do simple fairy cakes. It's simple enough that she can add ingredients with help and put cake cases in the tray ready. Then she adds icing and sprinkles as she wishes.
Our non baking activities are often card / picture making or dd dressing up as princesses and dancing

We like to make cupcakes, banana loaf, chocolate crispie cakes and chocolate brownies. My DCs and I also take it in turns to cook the main family meal (with supervision) and they love tucking into food that they have cooked.

Making and icing/decorating fairy cakes! DS is so good at it, he can do most by himself - I just help with weighing, "check" that it's all mixed together and put the cakes in to/out of the oven! Oh, and crack the eggs.... I do more of it than I realised!

I've always loved baking with my two – particularly with DS, with whom it was a real bonding activity when he was tiny and DD was at school. He could crack eggs perfectly when he was about 2 yrs old. Now they are 9 and 7 they are pretty much able to bake simple things themselves with minimal supervision from me, so we usually have a bake off in the school holidays, usually making fairy cakes, and each child chooses their own flavourings and decoration. Makes a horrible mess but they love it.

We love to make chocolate brownies together which we do most weeks for our schools cake sale. we are also MASSIVE geocaching fans so will spend a lot of holidays doing that!

They love cutting out biscuits/cookies so that is a favourite. Fairy cakes here too as they like to decorate. We keep it simple for now!

We love any baking that also requires decorating - Gingerbread men, fairy cakes, biscuits.

They would also be happy to draw and cut all day long if I let them. It's creative but rather messy - tiny tiny pieces of paper that get everywhere and are impossible to pick up!

My 5year old daughter and I love baking. We are quite experimental (thanks to my over enthusiastic and very creative 5 year old) and mostly bake different variations of chocolate cake, date and walnut, malteser cake, cupcakes and we love to play with icing to decorate.

While we are waiting for our creation to come out of the oven, we indulge in all sorts of art and craft, calligraphy and drawing.

When ready , the family gets together for a feast and a celebration ( of nothing in particular, just indulging in small and very tasty things in life )

we love baking tray bakes and muffins, and when the weather is good, we love to go out on a family bike ride

Chocolate brownies can be made very quickly and eaten even more so. The children love making them and adding a special ingredient of their choosing!

We now tend to have art (drawing) competitions, now that the children are older. Needless to say mine are the least good!

Am I the only one that bloody hates baking with the little buggers then?!

A) they get mess everywhere
B) I am left handed and incapable of teaching anything practical
C) I don't like cake anyway

Our activities are board games, hot chocolate for DC and wine for adults.

My 4 year old DS loves to bake and cook with me. Any kind of chopping, grating, mixing etc goes down well. Favourites include gingerbread dinosaurs, cheese scones, pizzas and pretty much any kind of tiffin/fridge cake if it involves chocolate!

I like baking cookies, because they are really easy to bake with kids, but also, when they are cold, the kids love decorating them :)

we love baking cupcakes and then visit family to give them out.

We are baking mad in our house! Baking is fun and brings families and generations together.

We love to bake yummy treats like cupcakes and brownies. Improvisation is key, it's about being creative and having fun but if the end result is delicious then that's a bonus!

Chocolate crispy cakes, made with rice crispies or cornflakes. Quick & easy!

farry cakes great fiun decorating...

My 5 year old and I love baking - tea loaf, carrot cake, flap jacks or jam tarts usually. My fancy new mixer spurs us on to make more than we might actually need as we don't have to use too much elbow grease! Saying that though, my daughter usually wants to do the mixing, cracking eggs and just generally get as involved as possible. Oh and taste testing/spoon licking..

On rainy days we've been known to make salt dough shapes to paint and decorate or do a massive jigsaw.

baking and decorating cakes

We love making jam tarts, but will happily bake anything (and then eat it.)
Also fond of making coloured play dough for the children to creat with.

We like to make mini quiches in muffin tins together - we whip up the pastry in the food processor, do a basic eggy mix and then customise with our own fillings. My son loves chorizo so lots go in his quiches, I like a bit of chipotle sauce in mine for a bit of a kick! We then have a ready made picnic, so if the weather is kind we can head straight out - the quiches make an easy and quick lunch.

We like to bake fairy cakes, sponge cakes, cornflake cakes, all the things kids love. It means I can let the kids go wild decorating them themselves.

The girls also love to do all sorts of art projects, they stay amused for hours with a craft pack from the pound shop.

We love baking little fairy cakes - but that is because of the fun in decorating them more than the baking to be truthful. Lately however we have been baking different fruit breads and if they do not come out that well then we use them to make a bread pudding so a win win :)

Has to be fairy cakes as cake mix was what I wanted the whole I was pregnant with the little one. We are tempting our first batch of shortbread over the weekend. Any tips or sure fire recipes would be great as shortbread is the recipe mum and I attempted throughout my childhood and failed spectacularly .

My little boy loves to bake biscuits, I use a recipie that I had in Home Economics at school when I was 11!
I try and let him measure and stir as much as possible which is great for numbers elc , while trying also to keep the 9 month old baby entertained at the same time which is a challenge!
I find it always helps to bake things he loves to eat and also let him loose on the washing up afterwards. (With hundreds of towls on the floor!)