Get the kids involved!

Teaching children to cook isn’t an easy task as you need patience and time, however, there are many benefits to cooking and baking with your little ones. Here we’ve put together a simple festive recipe and look at some of the benefits of baking with your children.

Quality family time

Baking with your kids provides you with some quality family time and can give your children a chance to relax and share what’s going on in their lives, allowing them to open up to you. Activities like baking can help create a bond and allows you to create some lovely memories.

Self-esteem

Cooking can be great for your children’s self-esteem and their confidence too, as it gives them a sense of pride and achievement knowing they have made something from start to finish. Kids who have more confidence and self-esteem usually find it easier to build relationships.

Education

When baking with your kids you can teach them fundamental life skills. They can learn where food comes from, the different processes of cooking, different tastes and they can begin to understand and appreciate the effort that goes into making and preparing foods.

Fun

Last but not least, baking is fun! Whether you are mixing ingredients together or rolling out the dough, baking and cooking can be as creative as you want and can help build positive family memories.

Christmas Treats: Strawberry Santa’s

Get the kids involved with this festive twist on Strawberries and Cream.

Ingredients:

• Strawberries
• 125g cream cheese
• 2tbsp icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• Chocolate chips

Method:

1. In a bowl mix the cream cheese, vanilla essence and icing sugar together to make your cheese mix.
2. Then cut both the bottom and top of the strawberries off, ensuring you save the pointed end for Santa’s hat.
3. Pipe some of your cheese mixture onto the main part of each strawberry then place the hat on top.
4. Finally, pipe on some buttons and the bobble of the hat and then add some chocolate chips for eyes.