| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Goxhill |
A challenge: help wanted for my preschoolersEr - I don't know if I'm asking this in the right place, but here goes anyway!I've been looking for a recipe that the little ones I work with can do as much as possible on their own. [A first step in Downsizing?] Not long ago I heard that a Nursery some distance from where I live allows children to make a chocolate crispie cake of some sort with minimal adult assistance. I thought if I asked them nicely they might give me some pointers, as it's not like we're in competition, but no. It still seems like an extremely good idea to me. I wondered if, for a crispie cake, they used some kind of chocolate sauce rather than melting chocolate? So now I'm trying to pick your brains. What can you come up with for children aged 2.5 years onwards to make as independently as possible? It doesn't have to be anything like a crispie cake, but obviously it does have to be very simple. No prizes for the winning recipe  but I would be very, very grateful. I do care passionately about the activities we provide for these little ones.
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| judith |
I don't know if this is the sort of thing that you want, but how about making some sort of jam tarts? You could pre-make the pastry, then the tots could roll it out themselves and have lots of fun using pastry cutters, putting the pastry in the tins and then spooning in the jam. Or they could make something like cheese straws with the pastry - again lots of rolling, twisting and sprinkling (cheese or poppy/sesame seeds).
I am, of course, assuming you have access to an oven. |
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| Penny Outskirts |
If you have access to Roal Dahl's (sp?) Revolting Recipes, there's some great stuff in there - if not i'll see if i can find my (i mean the kids  ) copy for you
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| Goxhill |
Thanks, Judith. We do have access to an oven, and we do pastry things with them, but I was ideally looking for something they could do start to finish fairly independently. Every session, if they chose to. Maybe it's too tall an order. See, the problem is the oven's in the kitchen & they don't always get to see things cooking for H & S reasons, staff:child ratios etc. | ||
| Nanny |
help wanted for my preschoolersthere is a cook book called "the Pooh cookbook" which might be of use as there are quite simple but very tasty recipes (i ought to know) all written in plain language for children.....check out the chocolate rock cakes.............to die for |
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| Goxhill |
Those 2 books both sound like strong contenders, thank you. Looks like a trip to the library is needed! | ||
| nora |
What about them making some chocolate butter icing and covering a sponge mini roll with it to make a little chocolate log?They could sieve some icing sugar over it at the end so it looks snowy too.
Or make marzipan shapes and paint them with some natural food colouring. |
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| Goxhill |
I like the chocolate log, Nora. Marzipan can be a bit tricky these days because of the nuts. We've at least 1 with a suspected allergy. 
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| nora |
Very good point - i'm ashamed to say I didn't even think of that(and I do Epipen and allergy training for staff in schools) 
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| 2steps |
what about a chocolate biscuit cake? that just needs to be put in the fridge | ||
| Bugs |
Peppermint creams? I think there are recipes without egg - I think 2.5 is still too tiny for raw egg? - but the one I have is:
1 egg white 1 tsp peppermint essence 1lb iing sugar 2 tsp glycerine Beat egg to frothy, add peppermint essence and sugar to form a stiff paste. Add teaspoons of water if too hard and extra sugar if too soft. After that it's basically play-dough with all the associated fun and games of making snowmen and using cookie cutters  I think you can add food colouring.
Problem is do you want to deal with the after effects of small children high on pure powdered sugar
Chocolate crispie cakes can be done with a syrupy type thing, or with pure melted chocolate - the chocolate can go quite cool before it starts to set again so you could potentially provide bowls of soft chocolate plus wooden spoons. Depending on how far you call from scratch little pizzas might be good...sauce, home made precooked bases, some ready prepared toppings and some mozzarella to tear up themselves? To be honest the shorties recipe I posted up somewhere is very, very easy, if you measure out the ingredients first, and make sure the butter is very very soft. It is one you roll up in to balls in your hand which should appeal to children. |
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| Bugs |
Oooh!..cheesecakes. Isn't there a recipe or two that doesn't require baking?
Biscuits to crush and layer for the base (you provide some cooled melted butter) Whatever the nocook topping is (I have a feeling there's one involving condensed milk and cream cheese) Fruit, chocolate chips or whatever for topping Along the same lines something like a fool or a charlotte? Whichever is breadcrumbs or biscuits layered with fruit mixed with cream. If you used defrosted frozen soft fruit (is that acceptable) that would be easy for them to mix? I can't help imagining all the *mess* though
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| sean |
They may be tidier cooks than you are. 
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| Goxhill |
Oh, we're good at mess!!!
Lots of 'food' for thought there - sorry about the pun! The fool/charlotte idea could be a good one to go with as we're also trying to promote healthy eating. Maybe we could stew fruit one day, let them make something with it the next ... I think there's a powdered egg white you can buy that might get over the problem of using it raw. Could do that for special occasions, but as you say, kids high on sugar is not good! 
Bugs, could you come up with a syrup for a crispie cake? I think for a regular 'happening ' that's probably still the best option. Even if I have to prepare a syrup beforehand myself. We have a cake recipe we use, where thay measure a tablespoon of SR flour, a teaspoon of marg, a teaspoon of sugar, & mix it all up with a tablespoon or 2 of an egg and milk mix. They really enjoy that. It ought to be possible to do a crispie cake on the same basis, didn't it - a tablespoon of crispies/other cereal and a tablespoon of some wonderful syrup? |
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| 2steps |
yes, you can buy powdered egg whites | ||
| Will |
The Pooh cookbook is superb. It's out of print but worth getting second hand, for example here: http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?an=stewart&y=10&tn=pooh+cook+book&x=22&sortby=3 or here http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0416652700/qid=1127807435/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-5410246-4797234 | ||
| cab |
There's a telly program, something like big chef little chef, which is a cookery show for tots. If you get a look at some of that, it might be just what you need. | ||
| Bugs |
I'm sure they had a book out that programme - the book people have a number of children's cookbooks but it's hard to tell exactly what age they are aimed at. Annabel Karmel always comes up when it comes to children's cooking but the ones on this one look much bigger than yours. | ||
| alison |
Big cook little cook I will be singing that theme song all day now 
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| Mrs Fiddlesticks |
I'm trying to think of what my kids use to do at playgroup.
One very easy but not so healthy thing is to have a pack of simple biscuits ( digestive etc ) and bowls of coloured icing and those icing pens and sweets etc and let them decorate a biccy themselves. But like I say NOT HEALTHY. In preschool they made a mini apple crumble each. Helped with cutting up an apple and then the lovely scrunching up of the crumble topping, that was very popular. They took home saucer sized crumbles in foil trays at the end and I remember my eldest being 4 at the time being very very pleased with himself! Another time they were able to make their own sarnies using things like marmite or grated cheese and cut up salad ingredients. Theres the old favourite at Easter of crushing shredded wheat and coating with melted chocolate before pressing in to cake cases to make 'nests' to put mini easter eggs in. But the best one, with help this one, was that they made mini Christmas cakes baked in teacups and then rolled out the fondant icing to decorate. The end result cos of the roundedness of the teacups was like an Xmas pudding with a circle of white icing and some cut out holly leaves on the top. That was a fab thing to make! |
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| alison |
How about mini pizza, choosing which toppings to use | ||
| bagpuss |
Decorating biscuits can always be fun, the they can indulge their creative instincts too. It works well with digestives but you can make shortbread if you want
Alternatively I have a recipe for some oaty biscuits which involved mixing oats with sugar, honey, malt and melted butter which should also work quite well then just needs baking in the oven! I can get your the recipe if you want! |
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| Goxhill |
I'd love the recipe, please, Bagpuss. We have a cookery cards file that we use with them anyway, so I'd put it in there. Along with the scones, pizzas, christmas cakes/puddings/mincemeat/'multicultural' recipes.
I'm going to try making a sauce -type mix made from 100g butter, 350g chocolate & 4 tbsp honey melted together. If it doesn't set too quickly, maybe I can let them mix a tablespoon of that with say a tablespoon of cornflakes, crispies or biscuit crumbs. I'll have a go & let you know how I get on, if that's OK. Many thanks for all your generous suggestions - they won't be wasted, I shall probably follow them all up because we're always looking to improve the range of activities we do together. The TV progs are a bit difficult because either they're on when I'm at work, or when I don't want to be thinking about work! |
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| Fee |
I bought my sister a great book a few weeks back, she's got a 3 month old baby, and isn't really the baking type of lady, so I got her a 'cooking for babies and toddlers' cookbook, which had recipes to do with kids aswell as for kids and babies.
The one recipe I particularly remember to do along with kids was a humpty dumpty on a wall. Ingredients for each child (kind of, this is from memory):
Method:
Another one I remember was ants on a log, which was actually celery sticks with salad cream or mayo down the middle and currants/sultanas marching down the middle...not sure many kids would go for that one though, sounds like a really desperate attempt to get kids to eat celery to me  )
You might get some ideas here: http://www.mcgees.com/kitchen/kidstuff.htm Fee
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| bagpuss |
here are two possibles
175g rolled oats 75g muscavardo sugar 1egg 60mls sunfloweroil 3tbsp malt extra mix together put deesrt spoon fulls on baking sheet and flatten with a fork bake at 180 for 10-15 mins untill brown 110g of oats (A mixutre of jubo and porridge works weel) 3oz demera sugar 110g melted butter or marg bake in a sheet for 15 minutes at 180 this you should bake like flapjack but I can't see why it wouldn't work as biscuits though you may need to reduce the cooking time |
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| Mrs Fiddlesticks |
the other thing you could do is incorporate making something with a story. Youngest son ( a Year 2 boy) is doing all about bears this term ( so they've been for a teddybears picnic in the woods) and so most importantly the teacher helped them make porridge!! Yumm.. wonderful winter food...
Or you could do a gingerbread man after the story.. you get the gist |
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| Mrs Fiddlesticks |
i don't have the book anymore but I did copy the recipe for chocolate fudge out of it and that's very nice! |
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| mandycharlie |
Ours did the decorating a biscuit activity when they were small, which they loved, but oh so not healthy..
how about making their own sandwiches for a teddy bears picnic, they could bring their teddy bears in... and then you could do an assortment of fillings, boiled egg, grated cheese, cress, ham, jam that sort of thing, with the choice of brown and white bread. And then they can spread the butter and sprinkle toppings on their sandwhiches, teach them to cut the crusts off and make nice fingers (oblongs) or triangles, squares or even circles with a pastry cutter.... stars and semi circles could easily be achieved with different pastry cutters (see even a bit of shape recognition going on there,,, ) Our kids seemed to enjoy things like that. I'll have a think and see what else I can remember. |