One of the first kitchen experiences many children have is helping Mom or Grandma make Kool-Aid or some other drink mix. They love to measure, pour (usually not so neatly), stir and watch as water from the tap magically changes into their favorite flavor drink. (If you still have small children and haven’t crossed into the making Kool-Aid stage, let me suggest putting the pitcher in a large pan to capture spilled sugar and water…It will save you quite a bit of clean-up time!)

Home-made drink mixes also make great gifts. Giving them to family members is an excellent way to get kids into the kitchen, and it gives them a personal input into the gifts they give each year. While dry mixes can vary from brownies to soups (I even saw one for dog biscuits!), something about drink mixes is satisfying. It invites a cup of cocoa or spiced tea on a cold winter night, or a mug of Santa’s favorite waiting for his arrival by the fireplace.

Before you begin, ask kids to help decorate mason/canning jar lids to match the intended contents. For spiced apple cider, for example, children may choose to cover the lid with an apple-print fabric, mount a small plastic apple with Gorilla glue or make an apple and worm combo out of clay. Allow them to then write the recipe on a decorated note card. Take the card to the copy shop, or scan and copy on your computer. Cover them with clear Contact paper to preserve. Don’t give away the original – you’ll want that for your own jar.

Notice that not all of the jar recipes are dry ingredients only. For gifts that need to be refrigerated, you’ll need to plan ahead. While these make super gifts for cross-country folk, refrigerated mixes should be given to in-town friends or family members.

There are so many jarred gift recipes online and in publications that finding the right ones to use won’t be a problem. To get started, check out the following:
1. Gifts from Your Kitchen
2. About.com>Busy Cooks

Once you’ve picked the recipe(s) that will be perfect for your family and friends, pull out the mixing bowls and decorated jar. Let the kids measure, mix (and don’t forget taste!), pour into jars and seal. Assist them in attaching recipe tags to each jar.

Alex and Soph love giving these as teacher’s gifts, but they’d make wonderful stocking stuffers or gifts for friends and neighbors, too. Best of all, nothing will top the pride your children feel as they hand-deliver the gift – homemade by them!

Happy Family Cooking Everyone!

Alex, Sophia and Mom

Remember tracing your hand and turning it into a turkey for Thanksgiving decorations? I guess every American child who’s attended kindergarten or first-grad has done it. How about turning that handy turkey into the theme for this year’s decorations?

Begin by having each of your children make the legendary hand-turkey. Take it to the copy shop, or scan and print extra copies. Now, get ready to have some fun with your kids!

Turkey Cake – Rolled fondant is a wonderful decorating material for cakes. Its pliable, dough-like consistency makes it more like working with a pie crust than with icing, but it tastes sweet and wonderful. Roll fondant out as directed (or make your own fondant). Let the kids place a piece of waxed paper on top, then place one of the turkey copies on top of that, taping it in place. (For multiple children, turkeys may overlap or stand in a row.) Kids can gently ‘trace’ their drawing onto the fondant. A dried pen or back-end of a spoon works great as a stylus. (Check after a couple of strokes to make sure they’re pressing hard enough, but not too hard.) Once the picture is transferred, remove waxed papers and let each child ‘paint’ their turkey with food coloring–we used gel food-coloring because water-based food coloring isn’t great for fondant. Carefully lift fondant and place on top of the cake, smoothing edges and sides. Let the kids put a row of candied corn around the bottom of the cake.

Cupcakes may be decorated to match, using just the turkey’s heads and dabs of color around the edges of the fondant icing ring.

Placemats – Let kids print their turkey onto printer paper, mount on 11×14” piece of coordinating colored paper and laminate each placemat.

Invitations – Use the same turkeys to make place cards or invitations, overlapping the drawings to put them all on a single invitation or putting a single bird on each.

Tee-Shirts can be made of the turkey-birds by printing them onto tee shirt transfers ahead of time. Make sure to make a shirt for grandparents and have the artist sign their original design.

Hang the original artwork in a prominent place around the dining room. A collection of each child’s turkeys, simply matted and hung, looks wonderful.

Imagine the pride your little ones will feel as they look around and see the family feast adorned by their original artwork. Alex and Soph get it all year long, mainly because they are my personal decorators ;P

Happy Family Cooking Everyone!

Alex, Sophia and Kelly

You might be surprised to find out you can buy severed limbs online–I was. Seriously! I found fingers, hands, feet, even hearts and intestines. There is every body part imaginable, and they’re priced so reasonably you can pick one up for next to nothing. They’re fake, of course, But they do provide a great opportunity for fun Halloween baking with the kids.

Glancing through the myriad of stores selling these polyurethane gems the other day I thought about how fun it would be to put one into play and see what happened. Remember the old zombie movies with the hand reaching up from the grave for an attempt at something that was supposed to resemble life? Well, why not make a cake like that for a Halloween party!

Gather kids, two 9×11 cake pans (one will work in a pinch), your favorite cake recipe, chocolate icing, a bag of gummy worms and, of course, ‘The Hand.’ You might also want a bit of rolled fondant, a dedicated liner brush and alcohol-based food coloring. Let the kiddies help you mix the cake, grease and flour the pans, pour the cake batter and bake. (Don’t forget to lick the bowl—it’s a must, of course!) Once the cake is done and cooled, the fun begins.

If you made two cakes, place them together to make a long sheet cake measuring 9×22. Measure the base of the hand (around the wrist) and, with a spoon, dig a hole in the lower quarter of one of the cakes. (If you’re only using one cake, put the hole close to the middle.) Put the cake crumbs from the hole in a bowl and set aside. Let the kids place a dollop of icing in the bottom of the hole and carefully put the hand inside. Secure it, if needed, with more icing and then it’s time to ice the cake(s). We recommend green frosting for a graveyard –like grassy look. When done, have the children crumble the extra cake on the top to make ‘dirt’ and lay the gummy worms around. They can push portions of the worms into the cake by making a small opening with the handle of a spoon and the shoving part of a worm into it. If the fingers of your zombie hand allow, put a worm up there, too.

For the ‘grave stone’, you can use some rolled fondant to make a rectangular grave marker. Add a humorous epitaph using, a liner paintbrush (dedicated to the kitchen, please!) and alcohol-based food coloring. Kids will enjoy making up something clever and writing it on the fondant or you can Google ‘funny epitaphs’. Here are a couple we found:

Here lies a man named Zeke –
Second fastest gun in Cripple Creek

Here lies Les Moore.
Shot down by a forty-four.
No Les
No Moore

Place the grave stone at the head of the cake and you’re ready to enjoy your spooky treat!

Happy Family Cooking Everyone!

Alex, Sophia and Mom

P.S. Happy Halloween everyone!!!

Putting together the perfect Halloween may be as simple as following a template. By coordinating all your decorating–from jack-o-lantern to cake, door decoration to cupcakes–a precisely orchestrated Halloween is as close as your computer…and your kitchen.

Begin by finding a jack-o-lantern carving template that you and the kids like. Check out eHow, or other sites Patterns for great pumpkin faces. There are dozens of places online with good Halloween templates and coloring pages to choose from if you don’t find one that you and the kids like there (FantasyJr.com, BHG.com, etc…). Print out your selection and decide how you want to use the face to bring things together. You can put your chosen face on a round or rectangular cake, cupcakes, front windows and doors and, of course, Jack himself. You’ll need measurements for each item/location you’ll be transferring your face onto. Let the kids help measure and record sizes needed. Some will be simple: an 8” round cake pan, or cupcake tins will be easy to determine. For the door or window treatments you’ll have to decide how big to make the image. Gather your print-out, information and kids and head to the copy shop. For smaller items, simply make copies to the appropriate size. Larger decorations may require you to copy parts of the pattern, or to enlarge it.

Cake and cupcakes –
Roll fondant onto waxed or parchment paper. Place a second sheet of waxed paper over the top of the fondant and put your jack-o-lantern template over it. Secure it with tape and have kids trace the face onto the fondant. Remove the pattern/waxed paper and move the fondant to the pastry. Let children paint your design with a set of dedicated brushes and alcohol-based food coloring.

Doors –
Purchase the correct color plastic party tablecloth from a party store. (If you’re doing a jack-o-lantern theme, orange is your color; green for goblin, etc.) Let older kids cut your image features from the correct color ContactPaper or construction paper. Younger children can assist in attaching each feature to the right spot on the door cover. Use duct tape to attach the decoration to the door.

Windows –
Duplicate the process above, using tissue paper. This allows light in during the day and casts a jack-o-lantern glow at night.

Jack – Cut the lid from your pumpkin; set aside. Let kids scoop goo and seeds. Save seeds for use later (link to goo piece). Trash the goo. Pin template to pumpkin with sharp nails, and use a pen, pressing firmly, to trace the image onto the pumpkin. Using a sharp knife, carve your jack. Have kids push cloves into the inside of the pumpkin and rub the lid with pumpkin pie spices. Place a small candle inside and replace the top. Be careful with old Jack during carving and while candle is lit.

If you’ve desire, you and your children can make couch pillow covers, mailbox cover and anything else using the matching jack-o-lantern face.

With all the ghouls, goblins and decorative Halloween templates available, your Halloween is sure to be spook-tacular!

Autumn brings on so many wonderful things. Leaves turn red and yellow, deep shades of maroon and gold. They drift to the ground like Fall fairies, decorating the ground in a patchwork quilt. Football begins, with rosy cheeked fans bundling into their team’s colors, chanting and cheering with no thoughts other than touchdowns and tailgate parties. School starts, sending the kids into a world of newness and learning. And, it’s pie time.

Little baked pies are perfect a perfect autumn treat. These hot pies are hand-sized (large or small) and more fun to make than a pile of colorful fall leaves for jumping in.

Mix your favorite pie crust recipe, whether out of a book or box. Let your little one measure ingredients and help with the stirring and rolling out the dough. It’s their job to cut it into rectangles about 5×8 inches (using a butter knife or a Curious Chef knife). The filling and decorating, also known as “the fun part”, are next.

Fillings can be as varied as your imagination. We use jelly of every variety, a bit of cocoa mixed with cinnamon and sugar (a lot of sugar!) set inside the crust with a blob of butter or regular pie filling. We prefer the ‘homemade’ route, filling our little rectangles to the halfway point with strange concoctions–like a canned half-peach, chopped fine and mixed with a little of its own juice or raisins and nuts in brown sugar.

We carefully moisten the edges of the crust with a bit of water and close the little pies shut, pushing the edges tight with tines of a fork. Then the fun begins – from the remaining pie crust we cut leaves, jack-o-lanterns, even acorns (or something that’s supposed to look like an acorn). For football, we cut eye-shaped balls and trace the lacings into them with the tip of our knives (go Vikings!) and create 3-D pompoms with strips of crust pressed together at one end. Attaching each precious decoration to a pie with a bit more water, we sprinkle with sugar and bake them until they’re golden, eating them as soon as our mouths can handle the heat.

I guarantee your children will love making them, too. The pies that come out of the oven are kid-sized and delicious. But the memories you’ll bake up with them will last forever–I guarantee that, too.

Happy Family Cooking Everyone!

Alex, Soph and Kelly

What kid doesn’t love decorating for Halloween? And whether your family is into the ghoulish or the less frightening, stirring up a little ghostly fun is a great way to bring in all the wonderful treats.

With this thought in mind, I started going through my mental flip-file of ideas for holiday smiles. I came up with a decorating idea, but a treat? Hmm … Nothing. There was something tugging at the back of my mind, but it was wrong somehow. This morning when I woke up, still thinking about a treat for October 31, it hit me. Snowmen!

Snowmen? For Halloween? That wasn’t right. But it was. Several years ago, Martha Stewart made awesome meringue snowmen for Christmas. Why not change the tiny darlings into little ghosts?

Find the original recipe and directions that inspired this one, check out MarthaStewart.com. Keep that in mind for December. But for October, get ready to adapt.

Things you WON’T need in Martha’s recipe: almond paste or red food coloring (because ghosts don’t wear scarves, silly!) Basically, all you’ll need is 3 egg whites, 3/4 cup sugar (super fine works best) and 1/4 tsp cream of tartar. Plus, for the ghosts eyes you’ll need a tube of black frosting (you can make your own, but the pre-made and in a tube kind from the grocery store are super handy).

- Have the kids separate three egg whites into a bowl, beat them with a whisk attachment until their foamy and then add ¼ tsp cream of tartar.

- Continue beating the eggs–have the kids take turns—and beat them until soft peaks form and then slowly add the sugar. Continue the beating until stiff peaks form.

- Scoop the meringue into a pastry bag…we don’t even bother putting tip on…and have the kids form their very own ghosts onto parchment lined baking sheet (although we’ve been known to substitute aluminum foil when we’re out of parchment, as you can see in the photo )

- Bake your creations at about 200 degrees for about 1 ½ hours, until they’re fairly crips, but still light colored. Take them out of the oven to cool down for about an hour.

- Finally, get out that frosting and let the kids pipe on some eyes and scary mouths.

Once these fun and tasty Halloween cuties are done, you might want to jazz thing up with some more permanent ‘table ghosts’…making them is just as fun. For each table ghost you’ll need:
- Soda bottles (any sizes)
- White squares of cotton fabric: measure the height of the bottle, multiply by 2 and add 2-3 inches. Cut fabric to this size square
- Fabric stiffener
- bowl
Pour fabric stiffener into bowl. Help the kids saturate each piece in stiffener and drape it over a soda bottle. If excess fabric remains at the bottom, straighten it to form a support. Place the bottle/ghost on waxed paper until dry. Kids can remove the dry fabric from the bottle.

Pastry Bag Set (12-pc.)

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If you want your ghosts to have arms, poke a hole in both sides of the bottle before you begin. Let the kids gather small branches and push them into the hole. Adjust to make the ghosts arms slightly raised. The kids can secure the branches with masking tape. Drape the fabric as before, manipulating it into the branch to make ‘fingers’ and give the arms some shape while the bottom of the arms dangle. When dry, carefully remove without smashing the arms.

Have a fun and safe Halloween. Enjoy each little princess, pirate, ghost and ghoul that comes to your home, your door and your party. Most of all enjoy your own!

Happy Halloween Cooking,

Alex, Soph and Mom

P.S. Make sure to ‘like’ us on Facebook right now!

Fall is here, and after the heat of this summer I think we’re all breathing a collective sigh of relief! Autumn means school’s back in session. It’s a good time to start new family activities, and a good time to bolster the immune systems of your children. Why not do both at the same time?

New research on sprouts adds to what we already know: they’re good for us. They fall into that ambiguous ‘healthy stuff’ group that kids often avoid without tasting, but you can fix that. They’re certainly worth the effort. Their health effects range from heart health to anti-cancer agents; they’re a good, low-cal snack, adding flavor and zest to a variety of dishes. And you can grow them yourself.

Growing sprouts is easy. It’s also fun to do as a family. Instead of using jars, like we did when we were kids, the most effective way to grow is in a hemp sprouting bag. They’re inexpensive and available all over the web. One will run you about $15, but it will last a long time. Jars take up space and require more time, break and limit the amount of air sprouts get while growing. Bags have none of these problems. Simply dip them in water and hang it to drain, saving kitchen counter space and time.

Pick your seeds carefully. Any vegetable, grain or nut seed will grow sprouts, but different seeds require more or less time (bean sprouts grow in a few hours, macadamia nuts need 60 days) and each has a distinctive taste. Some will maintain their nutrients when cooked and others need to be eaten raw. (See the link below for more information).

Do a little homework of your own and turn this into a cool science experiment for the kids. Chart how long different seeds take to sprout and then grow to harvest, or graph how hot or sweet a sprout is (radish are ‘hot’ by sprout standards and sunflower sprouts are sweet) or size of seed/bean/nut to growth time to see if there’s a correlation.

Once your sprouts are all grown up, it’ll be time for the family to hit the kitchen to some tasting. Recipes for sprouts abound. Use them in sandwiches, soups, quesadillas, pureed and used in paté … the possibilities are almost endless.

Make the kids an important part in growing, harvesting and preparation. Because the ‘farming’ is simple, you might give each child a sprouting bag as their own little farm. Help them get it going and remind them to dunk and drain the bag daily and help with harvesting. Pick recipes that are age-appropriate and let your grower make a dish for dinner using their plants as an ingredient. Alex and Soph get a kick out of feeding the family, from seed to serving, and we’re betting your kids will too.

References:
- How to Grow Sprouts
- What to Grow and How to Eat It
- E-Coli and Sprouts
- Nutrition Info. Fact Chart
- A List of Available Downloads

Happy Family Cooking (and Gardening) Everyone,

Alex, Soph and Kelly

P.S. Check us out on Facebook and give us a ‘Like’ then we can come and say ‘hi’ to you over there too!

Halloween is around the corner, along with ghosts, ghouls and, of course, jack-o-lanterns. Those pumpkin faces, whether smiling or snarling, are so traditional that it’s hard to imagine the night of tricking and treating without them. And, while carving them is great fun for the family, they do present a problem – what to do with the goo?

I guess everyone out there has roasted, toasted or baked pumpkin seeds. Every October, families gather around the table, pulling seeds from strings and pop soon-to-be snack into the oven. But just in case you’ve never tackled the inside of the pumpkin, here are a couple of tips and tricks to get your treats just right and get the whole family in the kitchen having fun.

First, don’t wash the seeds. That only serves to wash away good pumpkin flavor. Have the kids separate them from the goo the best they can and place them in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350° for about 25 minutes. Greasing the sheet will make them crunchy; leaving it ungreased will make them less so.

While they’re good just toasted and plain, there are variations. Here are a few to get you started:

• Bake for 15 minutes, pour melted butter over the top (just a bit), finish baking, salt and eat.
• Bake about 2 cups of seeds and mix them with ½ cup melted butter. Once they’re all moistened, add ¼ – 1 teaspoon chili powder (according to taste), ½ cup brown sugar and a dash or two of cinnamon. Bake them again for 10 – 15 minutes, or until the coating seems to be done. They’re great! We call them ‘Deviled Jacks’ (for jack-o-lantern), and love to spin the seeds around in our mouths until the flavor is gone, then crack and eat the meat.
• Flavor seeds with cumin, garlic or onion powder, pumpkin pie spices (yum!) or nutmeg.

If you don’t want to eat pumpkin seeds, there is something else to do with them from the kitchen–make holiday soap. For a great craft idea, check out Halloween Crafts: Pumpkin Seed Gift Soap

Pumpkin Melamine Cereal
Bowl Set of 6 – 6″

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The seeds were the easy part–now, on to the goo. Hmm … the goo ….
after you scoop the goo out of the pumpkin, and salvage the seeds (or store them in a zip-loc baggie in the refrigerator for up to 2 months), consider using the pumpkin for baking. yes, it’s easier to run to the store and grab a can of pumpkin pie filling. no, it’s not as good. plus, it’s fun to show the kids where the stuff in the can actually comes from.

use can use your fresh pumpkin in any pumpkin recipe. one ofour favorites is pumpkin bread, partially because it’s easy to make with the kids, but mostly because it’s delicious. to make our pumpkin bread extra tasty, we add chocolate chips and pecans before baking it and then drizzle it with chocolate syrup and serve hot with a dollop of whipped cream. there’s just something about that combination that feels right in the fall.

now, the goo–well, the truth is, there’s nothing cooking-wise to do with the goo. i’ve seen it used as something sick coming out of a ghoulish jack-o-lantern’s mouth and i’ve heard of having wars with the nasty innards_4 we usually just pitched ours into the trash. although, a family pumpkin goo war might be fun…. _4d

happy family cooking everyone,

alex, sophia and kelly

p.s. have you ;”>yet? If not, why not do it right now?

Sometimes, Alex and Soph can be a bit picky about the food they eat. Ok, maybe it’s a bit more than sometimes, I admit. BUT, because of that, one thing I do to encourage them to broaden their taste bud horizons is to try new things. With this process comes picking out and preparing new recipes.

Every other Sunday, the kids return home after their week at their Dad’s house. This is when we prepare for our week together, reviewing activities, finishing homework and planning what we’re going to eat for dinner each night. After trying to put together a few basic meal ideas for the week and having the kids respond with less than enthusiastic comments, I know it’s time to pull out the cookbooks and get them to help. I usually hand over a couple of our go-to cookbooks and a few of the newest issues of various cooking magazines I have on hand and have them start looking.

The beginning results of this process inevitably lead to dessert item after dessert item being flagged for us to make. However, with some persistent reminders of our goal to find dinner items, we eventually come up with at least a couple of respectable choices. Once we decided on our ‘try it’ recipes, we finalize our shopping list and head to the store for groceries.

When the assigned day for one of our agreed upon ‘try-it’ recipes arrives, we’re always excited about it. As soon as we get home from school and work, we dig out the recipe, all the necessary ingredients and tool and get to work. We all do our part cleaning, cutting, stirring and flipping as necessary—oh and tasting too, of course. Sophia usually makes the event into a party, as well, by fancying up the table and making sure we eat by candlelight (as all families should on occasion ;D).

When we plan a ‘try-it’ meal it’s like a family date night. It belongs to all of us and it’s lots of fun, even when the recipe isn’t so tasty or if we mess it up. As we eat, we discuss how great of cooks we are or what we’ll do different next time—or we laugh as we eat tuna sandwiches because the recipe was a disaster.

Get your kids to pick a recipe or two they’d like to try and then plan the night. I assure you you’ll have a great evening together as a family.

Happy Cooking Everyone,

Alex, Sophia and Kelly (Mom)

P.S. Our One Year Anniversary gift to our list subscribers will be coming out soon (this weekend if all works out) so make sure to sign up now so you don’t miss it!

One sure way to get the kids in the kitchen, at least at our house, is to say the word ‘experiment’. We’ve done all of the traditional kitchen experimentation—baking soda and vinegar, sugar crystals, an egg in vinegar, etc.—Recently, though, I’ve been trying to make edible food items more science-y by presenting them as more of an experiment.

Some foods and recipes work better for this than others. For example, in our episode of 2 Kids Cooking TV, ‘Making Mozzerella, the kids and I had fun making delicious cheese while learning about separating milk into its various parts.

Some other real food that would work well in the edible food experiment arena include:
• Making mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce (Emulsions)
• Making Ice Cream in a Bag (Freezing Point Depression and Colligative Properties)
• Meringues and Soufflés (The Power of Egg Whites)
• Cottage Cheese and Ricotta (Catalysts and Coagulation)

There are some other ideas at ‘The Accidental Scientist: The Science of Cooking’ website that we like as well. They have experiments involving bread, pickles, candy, eggs, spices and meat. Each section includes recipes, explanations and activities.

We hope one or more of these ideas draw you and your kids into the kitchen to have some edible science fun. As Alex, Sophia and I work our way through these experiments, we’ll be sure to record each one and share via the show, of course

Have fun cooking together!

Alex, Sophia and Mom

P.S. If you have any ideas for edible experiments you’ve done, let us know by posting a comment below or by sharing over on our fan page wall at Facebook!