Information center: Cooking with your Child

Pancake Magic!
Liberate your pancakes! They don't have to be just round and brown anymore! Dazzle your preschooler with a fun twist on the ordinary breakfast pancake. By adding food coloring to your pancake batter you can make your pancakes any color of the rainbow. Blue, red, purple, and green pancakes will be all the rage at your house and your children will be gobbling them up faster than you can make them.

To add even more dimension and fun to the meal, make your colorful pancakes into letters, numbers, shapes, and/or animals by using a turkey baster to "pour" the colored batter onto a hot skillet. Imagine what your preschoolers will think of purple pancakes made into the letters of their name. They will giggle with delight!

Additional ideas for interesting pancakes are:

• Have pancakes for an afternoon snack or dinner instead of just for breakfast
• Add chocolate chips to the batter
• Let your children "paint" the syrup on their pancakes with clean watercolor paintbrushes

The above is an excerpt from the book Mommy’s Rainy Day Survival Guide.

Big Oven-Baked Pancakes
Submitted by Gabriela of Santa Cruz. She writes, "my three year old requests this pancake for breakfast almost everyday".

What You Need: 1 c. milk (skim or whole). 4 eggs. 1 c. flour. ¼ tsp. baking powder. ¼ tsp. baking soda. ½ tsp. vanilla. pinch of salt. 2 tbs. butter. jam, fresh fruit for the topping.

Cooking Instructions: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put a heavy cast iron skillet in the oven as soon as you turn it on. Put eggs and milk in blender, blend for 30 seconds. With blender running, slowly add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and vanilla. Blend for another 30 seconds on high. When the oven has reached 400 degrees, take out skillet and put in the 2 tbs butter. It will melt instantly in the pan and start sizzling. Swirl butter across the bottom of the whole skillet, then pour in the contents of the blender. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until it has puffed up and is golden brown on top. Slice into wedges and serve with jam, fresh fruit, lemon juice and powdered sugar.

 

Parent to Parent Helpful Hints

Nutritious & Festive Celebrations
For my son’s stuffed animals’ numerous “birthdays”, we make “cakes” that don’t spoil meals. I use a round biscuit cutter to cut two “layers” of cake from a piece of whole wheat bread. Then I let my son “ice” the cake with yogurt between layers and on top. (Use a dot of food coloring for blue or pink icing.) The “cake” is just big enough for my son and his friends to share. (He cuts it into several pieces and eats them all!)
Susan

Dishwasher Clean-Up Fun
I hesitated to let my messy toddler “help” me mix, measure and pour in the kitchen. Then I realized the dishwasher door opens down to a toddler-height workspace. Clean-up is as easy as shutting the dishwasher. Whatever spilled out of the bowl onto the door gets washed away with the next load of dishes.
Susan

Dinner Help
One way I occupy my children while I get dinner together is by having them help prepare the salad and vegetables. My almost three year old likes to wash veggies and cut celery and beans with a plastic knife. My eighteen-month-old loves to tear lettuce into pieces, and both can help twirl the salad spinner and slice the mushrooms with the egg slicer. (Yes, I do re-wash some things when my daughter isn’t looking!)
Karen