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Thursday, October 18, 2012

Guest Post - Baking Made Fun for You and your Kids

Today I'm lucky enough to have a guest post about making baking into a fun, time-filling activity with your kids! Special thanks to Jennifer Mackey!
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Baking day is here in your household once again! You'll soon get to experience the joys of having your kitchen covered in flower and egg shells scattered on the cabinets. No doubt exists that a mound of sprinkles and chocolate chips will soon take up residence on the floor. Sure, your children might enjoy all of this; however, how can you make cooking making fun for you and your little ones?

Host Cookie Swaps 

When the kids are really little, they'll likely aim to please you. As they age, however, baking might become more of a chore. Host a Christmas cookie swap at your home so that they have guests to impress. Let them bake their own batch to exchange with family members and friends.

Simple Recipes 

Sometimes children have difficulty with recipes that involve a great number of ingredients. They'll become bored, or they may find it too complicated for them. Yes, we know you love your homemade cookies, but it might be necessary to step it down a bit when working with little ones. Scrape off those cookies that you just cut and put them into the oven yourself. To make it a little bit more fun, give kids sprinkles to dress up the cookies before popping them into the oven. They can pretty much do the whole process by themselves aside from putting them in the oven.

Decorate, Decorate, Decorate! 

To piggyback off of the sprinkle idea, you should also include a plethora of decorating items for your kids to use. Have chocolate and rainbow-colored sprinkles, so kids can go with their color of choice. M&Ms, chocolate chips, Reeses Pieces and other little candies serve as good options. Remember, chocolate will melt if you put it in the oven, so kids can decorate when they come out of the oven too. Buy plenty of icing and fudge, and kids will be able to make smiley faces or other pictures of their choice on the delightful and delicious cookies.

Cookie Cutters 

When you think of silly cookies, images of cookie cutters likely come into your mind. However, these fun little shapes are not only for Christmas. Halloween cookie cutters and Hanukkah cookie cutters are also popular. Do you want to find cookie cutters for other holidays and celebrations? Simply visit a store that sells Wilton products or visit Amazon for a plethora of options. You can also provide slightly older children with plastic knives, so they can cut out their own shapes. The possibilities are virtually endless when children have the flexibility to make their own. Once they cut out the shapes, you can add on the decorating component.

Baking with children, regardless of how many of these tactics you may employ, can still end up creating a bit of a mess in the kitchen. However, just look at the smiles resting upon the faces of your little ones. The smiles will be worth all of the splattered flour, brown sugar and sprinkles in all of the world. Enjoy those cookies now!

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Jennifer Mackey is a child development tutor and a contributing writer for termlifeinsurance.org






 

2 comments:

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