More ideas for cooking with the kids

pizza 3What can I do mum? Mum, I’m bored?

If that sounds like your house this week, set the kids to work! The older your children get, the more able they are to help spread the load over the holidays. Ask your child to help make lunch and you may get more moans. Show them a recipe and say, “Do you want to try making this?” and you may find that lunch is made for you!

We were asked to review a recipe for Great British Chefs and chose the Pizza Hearts recipe. I picked it because all our lot like pizza, and it seemed simple enough for them all to lend a hand: K is 4, j is 7 and D is 11. In the end, K decorated cupcakes, J played on the DS, but D did a great job!

The recipe is really straightforward. Don’t worry if you’ve not worked with yeast before: it is more about putting the effort in than skill. Set your children onto giving the dough a good pounding during the morning, then they can take a break to chill while it rises… or make the dough yourself if you have little ones, and then let them loose at the decorating stage.

pizza 4The recipe calls for courgette, but that’s not a favourite at our house, so we swapped it for ham and sweetcorn: don’t be afraid to adapt recipes to suit your family’s likes and dislikes.

D says, “The dough was sticky. It was fun to make.”

Because it’s Easter, our pizzas were chick, bunny and egg-shaped! That doesn’t necessarily show very well in the pictures. Whatever the shape, they tasted great! Do give the recipe a try and let s know how you get on.

Quick tip: a pack of pizza base mix can be substituted for making your own base. Easy!

pizza 1

Disclosure: Great British Chefs will be paying for the pizza ingredients. Child labour came free – thanks D!

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