Cooking with Emma

Easy Bake Cookies

2010-08-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

Emma received an Easy Bake oven from her grandparents for her birthday last week. Ah, how this brought back memories. Only I recall mine as having been red and in no way resembled a microwave. Were microwaves even invented back then? *L*

I have to say that some of those memories made me determined to not allow her to take her oven up in her room. Isn't it funny what we were allowed to do as children we won't let our kids do? For some strange reason I was not only permitted to have the Easy Bake oven in my room but I also mixed up the recipes on the floor of my room. Then when I ran out of little cake mixes you would be amazed by the strange creations I created probably without my mother's knowledge even. I guess my parents figured I couldn't do too much damage with a 100 Watt light bulb other than burning my fingers. Maybe I was little older when I had mine. I don't recall. The box says 8 and up and Emma is just 7 so and one thing I have learned, no matter how old or mature you think your child is... stick with the recommended age.

However, having said all that Emma was tickled pink to have received it and it was probably one of her favourite presents. Of course it took us about a week to finally pick up the right light bulb. The first one I picked up was frosted, apparently a no no.

Now what to make? Emma promptly chose sugar cookies swayed I am sure by the attractive photo on the package cover of lovely frosted cookies with pretty pink sparkles on top.

We read the directions:

turn oven on and allow to heat for 15 minutes
mix two sugar cookie packages together (TWO?)
add 2 TBS water
mix until ball formed

Okay Emma could mix quite well after all she's had lots of practice helping mix wet ingredients for me quite frequently. When it comes to forming a dough ball, well it wasn't happening anytime soon. Put into the role of teacher I find it quite difficult to convey to her in words things I simply know by feel. Still I will keep working on that. After all learning by feel is probably the best lessons to learn when it comes to cooking.

divide dough ball in to four parts
lightly grease pans
roll each part in to a ball and gently press one into pan.

Got that... ONE cookie per pan.

push through slot and bake for 10-12 minutes
push into cooling chamber for a minute or two
remove and cool cookie
repeat 3 more times.

So let's do the math, 15 minutes to heat the oven, 10 minutes per cookie and it made four cookies so that comes to... 55 minutes total... to cook four cookies. It's funny but I don't recall having that much patience when I was a kid.

Was it worth it? What do you think?

Fruit Salad

2010-07-14T11:33:00.001-07:00

I had gone grocery shopping one afternoon and came home to "Mommy, I want to make a fruit salad like this."

After having just carted in a car load of groceries I can tell you I was less than thrilled that I was the "chosen one" to assist her in making said fruit salad. But I sucked it in and realized, hey what a great way to kick of " "Cooking With Emma". As much as I wanted to stick my nose in and tell her how to do it, I stepped back and allowed her to direct and you know what... it turned out pretty good.

Ingredients:
Fruit: Cherries (whole), Kiwi, peeled and chopped, apple peeled and sliced, plums chopped, grapes (whole)
Ice Cream
Honey

Directions:

Take a large glass bowl and: place a handful of sliced kiwi, chopped plums and grapes. Drizzle a small amount of honey over fruit.

Take ice cream, flavour of your choice, we used napolean because that's what we had. Take several scoops of ice cream and lightly cover the fruit.

Take your apple slices and stick decoratively around the ice cream. Our pattern represents a castle with the whole cherries representing turrets. Drizzle more honey over the whole thing, take a minute to ooh and ah and then serve.

See it looks just like a castle... right? ;)

The great thing about fruit salad, is that you can use whatever ingredients you want. The sky is the limit. Instead of ice cream, use whip cream, or dream whip or pudding. Personally, I think a drizzle of chocolate would have made this absolutely perfect.

Emma and I would love for you to share your links of great recipes for kids.

Zeemaid

Cooking with Emma - An Introduction

2010-07-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first week of Cooking with Emma.

With three children it's often hard spending quality time with each of them. Now that my eldest is in school full time, I find it even harder to get some one on one time with her. I have been working my way through two books called "Breaking the Good Mom Myth" and "Honey, I've Wrecked the Kids" by Alyson Schafer. One thing I have gleaned from these books is that too often we devalue our children's abilities. They are capable of so much more than we give them credit for and children often will thrive on increased responsibility. So I figured why not spend more time with her and teach her a skill at the same time.

My goal this summer is to complete at least 30 posts. (including this one.. cheating I know). Emma and I will go through cook books and pick out anything that looks yummy. The only rule I have is that we must eat what we cook.

We will be posting recipes and anecdotes along the way of the good and the bad of what we have accomplished. Will this improve Emma's behaviour and my connection with her? We shall see. I am very hopeful.