Festive baking with the kids

I definitely have a love/hate relationship when it comes to cooking or baking with my children and, with three children of very different ages (11, 7 & 3), it’s a bit of a challenge to find recipes that suit them all! My eldest loves to bake and is capable enough now to do things on her own. Just last year she hosted her own bake sale outside our house, baking all of the cakes herself and raising £90 for the NHS. My youngest two obviously still need a lot of support, so here are my top tips when it comes to baking with children! 

Give yourself enough time

Cooking or baking with your children requires patience and time – and you definitely need enough of both to survive the process! Don’t rush, and it’ll make it a much safer and more enjoyable experience. 

Be prepared

Have everything you’re going to need ready – your children can help with this too.

Make your space as child-friendly as possible, so move the sharp knives/kettle/anything hazardous out of the way. Setting up the kitchen beforehand will create less stress and less panic. 

Involve the children in recipe selection

This is a good one for fussy eaters! They’ll be more excited to cook a recipe if they picked it out.

It’s all in the prep

Depending on the age of your child, they can help with washing, peeling, deseeding, measuring or cutting. If you have a younger child, they can still get involved – they may not be able to use sharp knives, but they can help with mixing, pouring, weighing etc. 

Mistakes are all part of the process

Mistakes are the best way for us to learn – it doesn’t matter if the measurement is slightly off, the recipe is slightly out of order, or there’s egg shell in the batter. Your little one will start to feel more independent and may also offer to help in the kitchen more often!  

Embrace the mess

It is going to get messy and for the children it is all part of the process. Don’t let them think they can leave at the end without helping to tidy up too – they need to be as much involved in the cleaning up process as they are with the making of the treats.

Let the fun begin!

Shortbread biscuits

The first recipe we tried was a nice simple shortbread biscuit. 

You will need

• 250g caster sugar 
• 500g stork baking spread  
• 750g plain flour 
• Cookie cutters (we used Christmas shapes) 

This volume of ingredients made quite a lot of mixture (more than we needed!) If you wanted to make fewer biscuits, you could use smaller amounts of each ingredient; just start with the sugar and then double the amount for the butter and then triple the amount for the flour e.g. 100g sugar, 200g butter, 300g flour. You may want to add slightly more flour, depending on how wet the mixture is. Adding more flour will make the consistency slightly thicker.  

For the decoration

• Icing sugar 
• Food colouring 
• Sprinkles (optional) 
• Edible glitter (optional) 

Method

• Preheat your oven to 170℃ (fan).
• Mix the butter until soft, add in the sugar and sifted in the flour. Keep mixing until it has a firm consistency.  
• If you have time, before rolling out your mixture, wrap it in cling film and leave it in the fridge; overnight if possible. Alternatively, pop the cut cookies in the fridge for about an hour before baking. Doing this just helps them not to spread out when in the oven. It all depends on how patient your little bakers are! 
• Roll out the dough onto a floured surface until it is a few millimetres thick, then cut out your shapes. We went for Christmas shapes, but you could do anything you fancy!
• Pop the cookies onto a lined baking tray and into the preheated oven.
• Bake for approximately 13 minutes, or until they are a light golden brown colour. Keep an eye on them though as they can very quickly go from golden to burnt!  
• Once they are ready, carefully remove from the oven and leave to cool on a cooling rack.  
• Once completely cooled, we decorated each biscuit with some glace icing, sprinkles & edible glitter (you can never have too many sprinkles). Absolutely delicious! 

We then went on to make some mince pies. I’m not a massive fan but they are a firm favourite in our family, and everything tastes better when you’ve gone to the effort of making it yourself. This recipe is great as there is enough for little hands to do (mixing, weighing) but also lots of chopping for older children too.  

Mince pies

You will need

For the filling: 

• 1 jar of mincemeat (we used Tesco finest) 
• 2 satsumas, segmented and finely chopped 
• 1 apple, finely chopped 
• Zest of 1 lemon 

For the pastry: 

• 375g plain flour 
• 260g unsalted butter, softened 
• 125g caster sugar, plus extra for sprinkling 
• 1 large egg, plus 1 beaten egg for glazing 
• Round cutters in two sizes (we used 8cm & 7cm) 

I’m going to be honest here, I’ve never made pastry from scratch – it has always seemed like a bit of a faff! This was a good opportunity to have a go and get the children involved too. As it goes, shortcrust pastry is relatively straight forward to make.  

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200℃ (fan).
• Place the flour and the butter into a bowl and rub together to make a crumb-like consistency. This is particularly enjoyable for your children if they like getting messy hands!
• Add the caster sugar and a beaten egg and mix together. 
• Tip onto a lightly floured surface and fold until the pastry comes together – be careful not to over mix.
• Wrap the pastry in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 10 mins.  
• Scoop the mincemeat into a bowl and add the chopped satsumas, chopped apple and lemon zest.  
• Using your larger cutter, cut out the bases and place them into muffin trays. 
• Put 1-2 tbsp mincemeat mixture into each. 
• Re-roll the pastry and using your smaller cutter, cut out the lids and press them on top to seal. Glaze with the beaten egg, sprinkle with the extra caster sugar, then make a small cut in the tops. A fork is great for this. 
• Bake the mince pies for approximately 15 mins until golden brown – keep an eye on them as they can turn very quickly! 
• Leave to cool before releasing them from the muffin trays. Dust with a little more icing sugar before serving. 

When it comes to mince pies, I’m definitely converted with homemade. Our pastry was rolled a little too thick, but it was so much easier to make than I had anticipated, and not a soggy bottom in sight!  

Have a go this Christmas, get your children involved and just have fun. It’s a great way to spend time together while learning important skills, and the end results are usually pretty tasty too! 

You can check out some more child-friendly Christmas recipes here.

Don’t forget to tag @BaskingBabiesUK in your creations. Happy baking!