Cooking With Young Children

Let’s Get Cooking With Young Children

Cooking with young children is a wonderful way to spend time together as a family while teaching your child new things. Your child can build on many important skills through cooking:

1. Pre-literacy: Read recipes and ingredients aloud to your child.
2. Maths: Help your child measure weights and volume and add ingredients to the cooking mixture.
3. Science: Let your child mix ingredients and talk about changing states – liquids melting into solids, boiling creating steam, etc.
4. Language: Explain every step in detail, tell your child what you are doing and why. Ask questions and give your child the opportunity to predict outcomes. Talk about individual ingredients and explain their purposes,
5. Communication: Listening and following instructions
6. Socialisation: Taking turns and sharing

Health & Safety in the Kitchen When Cooking with Young Children

Cooking with your children can be lots of fun for everyone. It’s also very important to keep these safety tips in mind:

• Keep all knives and other sharp objects out of reach.
• Teach your child to always wash their hands before preparing food.
• Do not allow your child to stir pots on the stove or open the oven to check on food.
• Teach your child to turn their head away from the food to cough or sneeze.

Simple Recipes for Young Children

Here are some easy and fun recipe ideas to try with your child…

Cheerio Roll-Ups

10 cocktail frankfurt sausages
5 slices of bread (buttered)
5 rashers of bacon (cut in half)
3⁄4 cups of grated cheese
10 toothpicks

1. Roll a piece of bacon around each sausage.
2. Cut the bread in half diagonally, and place a sausage on each piece – buttered side down.
3. Sprinkle cheese over each sausage. Roll up the bread and secure with a toothpick.
4. Bake at 150 C for 15 – 20 minutes, or until the bread is toasted and the cheese melts.

Yummy Coconut Ice

1. Lightly grease a 20cm square baking tin.
2. Mix 2 cups of sugar and 1⁄2 cup of milk in a large saucepan and bring it to the boil over a low heat. Boil for 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Take it off the stove and add 1-3⁄4 cups of coconut.
3. Put half the mixture into the baking tin and spread – add 3 drops of red food colouring to the remaining mixture and mix, then pour it into the tin, spreading the pink mixture over the white. This process must be done quickly as the coconut ice sets fast.
4. Cut into squares immediately.

I Love You Pikelets

Make up a batch of your favourite pikelet or pancake mix with your child. Using a dessert spoon, pour the mixture into the pan in the shape of love hearts.

Older preschool children may be able to turn the pikelets over to cook the second side before removing them from the pan, to the cooking rack. This must always be done under close supervision.