Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Kitchen Tip Tuesdays - Simplifying Recipes for Kids

During the past year my daughter has become more interested in cooking and baking. Ideally she would like to do it "all by myself."

One problem that has surfaced is that a number of the recipes I use, I revise as I go along. The recipe says 3 c flour - I revise it to 1.5 c whole wheat flour and 1.5 c white flour. The recipe says 1/4 c oil - I replace it with unsweetened applesauce.

My daughter of course doesn't know all these little changes I make so what I am in the process of doing is to take some of the regular recipes I make, and to rewrite them in a simpler format for my daughter.

A lot of my recipes I can find online so I just find the recipe, paste it into a word document and make the appropriate changes. Any unnecessary information in the recipe I delete. I increase the font size and put a space between each line of instruction so it is easier to follow. Simplifying the recipe means less supervision needed by mom.

I have thought of putting each recipe in a page protector so my daughter can use an erasable marker to cross off or check off each item as she adds it to the mixing bowl, or completes a step in the instructions. Once the recipe is completed - you just need to wipe off the marker and it's good to go for the next time.

So far I've revamped about 4 recipes for her - not many, but my goal is to keep having her work on one recipe maybe once a week until she "masters" it, rather than working on a lot of different recipes each week.

The pages will be hole punched and placed in a binder and this will be my daughter's own cookbook.

Head on over to Tammy's Recipes for some more Kitchen Tip Tuesdays.

6 comments:

Jennifer said...

The page protector idea is great. I use this for my Home Control Journal (ala FlyLady). After everything is checked off as done, I just wipe the page protector clean and am ready to go for the next day.

Laura said...

I love this idea! I mostly have my recipes "in my head"...so I'm always having to write them down for the boys. They would love a binder with recipes in it like this!

Sonshine said...

Great idea! Keep adding to it so that she will have her own cookbook of "Mom's Recipes" once she is out of the house. :) Its a great way to pass down those family recipes. :)

Dianna said...

Great idea! It's my goal to eventually have all of my recipes written out like this, so anyone can make them, kids or husband or neighbors. It makes them easier to share and it helps me out if I'm feeling spacey!

Anonymous said...

What a great idea ! Your daughter will love it ! She'll love it even more as she gets older !

Heather said...

I did the same thing using extra individual photo page protectors I got free with an album at some point. I use index cards for each recipe.

Now she has learned enough of how I adjust things to do it on her own (we spent a whole day playing with different quantities of wet and dry ingredients and learning what each thing actually does so now she is pretty good at adjusting by herself.)