7 of the best recipes for kids (2024)

Letting children cook alongside you is a brilliant way to spend quality time with them. It fosters an early interest in good food (which may lead to healthier eating habits), plus amongst all the fun, it’s sneakily educational.

If the idea of letting your kids in the kitchen makes you nervous, don’t be. Messes can be cleaned up (get them involved in that too), and teaching them to be safe around heat sources and sharp objects from a young age means they’re more likely to be sensible with them from the get-go.

Our top tip (especially if you’ve got very little ones): Take a few minutes to gather all of your ingredients and equipment together before the kids come into the process. That way, you’re not turning your back on them mid-way through cooking, and ultimately it helps ensure they stay safe.

Cooking isn’t just creative – it’s a chance to learn all kinds of lessons, even for the tiniest tots. Following a recipe affords a fun opportunity to read, while weighing ingredients can help with number recognition and mathematical skills. As well as this, mixing, mashing and squishing can all strengthen the muscles in hands and arms that are needed for writing. Having a result that they can be proud of is a good self-esteem and mood booster too.

Most parents will be familiar with the likes of roll-out biscuits, cupcakes, and Krispie treats, but the following recipes are all great for cooking with children. Here are 7 of the best recipes for kids to try out...

Pizza

Perfect for children of all ages and attention spans, pizza from-scratch teaches an important basic culinary skill, making bread.

There’s lot of different activities too – making dough, rolling it out and topping it, so it’s guaranteed to entertain (and, bonus, they end up with a dinner afterwards). Even a one-year-old in a highchair can have fun squishing a blob of the dough and smushing on the toppings.

It’s a fabulous motivator to try foods they might not usually eat (like olives or even sardines) and soft ingredients like balls of mozzarella and mushrooms give them a safe first foray into cutting. They can use a cutlery knife to practice their chopping.

Try our Margherita Pizza recipe

Spaghetti Bolognese

Making a basic Bolognese is another lesson that will set them in good stead for later life. The principals of frying mince and veg form the basis for many a hearty family meal.

Whilst toddlers won’t be able to stand and stir at the hob, you can get them involved in the prep. Younger children can learn how to safely grate cheese, whilst older ones can learn how to chop onions and watch you fry the ingredients.

Try our Spaghetti Bolognese recipe

Fruit crumble

An easy dish which only has a few steps, crumbles are perfect for smaller children to help with.

Making the topping by hand not only teaches the foundations of pastry making – the manual action of rubbing the flour and butter together helps strengthen their hand muscles, which in turn helps develop their handwriting skills.

Try our best Crumble recipes

Toad in the hole

Batter-based recipes like Toad in the Hole are great to make with kids – they come together easily from very few ingredients, and little ones can gain dexterity cracking and beating eggs.

There’s plenty of whisking which improves hand-eye coordination and they can delight in the ‘magic’ (or science for the preschoolers) of eggs puffing the batter up gloriously high.

Try our Toad in the Hole recipe

Veggie fritters

If you have a veg-avoider, fritters are ideal for proving that greens can be delicious, and kids are more likely to try food when they’ve had a hand in making it.

Rather than disguising vegetables (honesty is the best policy), fritter mixture is a tasty vehicle which can make them more palatable.

Try our Courgette and Bacon Fritters recipe

Banana bread and muffins

Little (and big) kids love mashing stuff. Bananas are soft enough to do so easily, and banana bread is a forgiving recipe that turns out perfectly in spite of lumps or uneven mixing.

This banana bread recipe is great if you’ve got kids with an egg or dairy allergy too.

Try our Banana Bread recipe

Real fruit ice lollies

This one is such a simple idea, it doesn’t require a recipe. Get small hands to help peel and mash any whole fruit up (especially any that’s starting to look sad in the fruit bowl), add a splash of water if it’s very thick, then spoon into ice lolly moulds, insert a stick and freeze until solid (or you can use empty fromage frais pots with a spoon or chopstick as the stick).

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