Cooking with Kid(s)

I enjoyed having my nieces in town for Thanksgiving. I think the best part
(other than the Raggedy costume)
was the quality time I spent with Adele in the kitchen on Friday! (Making food that was homemade, but full of refined flour and white sugar - and food coloring! - not exactly Slow Food or Local Food or Real Food.)

I posted earlier about trying to figure out what to serve for breakfast to my niece that does not include eggs, oatmeal, or peanuts. My sister decided on pull-aparts - and actually got up early in the morning to make the dough, so it had plenty of time to rise.

Okay, so breakfast still wasn't ready until 10:30, and I didn't get any pictures of the process, but Adele did a great job helping me put little balls of dough rolled in butter and cinnamon sugar in my Bundt pan.

She's two, so I was afraid she'd pile all the dough on one side of the pan. Actually, she did a great job of putting the balls around the pan. When she had filled one layer of dough about halfway around the pan, she looked at her handiwork and exclaimed (I am not making this up), "oh look, it's a perfect rainbow." She was right. The balls of (brownish) dough in a semi-circle were indeed a perfect rainbow shape. She continued on with her work, and eventually the dough made a perfect circle. After the first layer, I think she got a little bit bored, and she started just throwing the dough anywhere. But it only took a little bit of rearranging before the finished product was set on top of the oven to rise again. The rolls were pretty good, although they could have had more of the butter/sugar mixture!

Later in the day I asked Adele if she wanted to make cookies with me. She and her mom do cooking "projects" at home sometimes, and she really seems to like them. Plus, Portage is a nice town but it isn't the most exciting place for two-year-olds. (We don't even have an art desk.) I got out my grandpa's Crisp Cookie recipe that my aunt gave me a few years ago, when I knew I wouldn't make it all the way to WI (from Kentucky) for Christmas, but didn't want to miss out on Grandpa's cookies. (Or the decorating that goes with it.)

Michael and I had (a little too much?) fun decorating the crisp cookies last year!
Adele helped me pick out good cookie cutters (she named the shapes as I held them up - if she didn't know what the shape was supposed to be, we didn't use that one)
hmm . . . what could this be?

She was very interested in sprinkling flour on the dough mat
and she even helped roll out the dough.
The cookies turned out pretty well by my standards - none of them were burned or undercooked, and only a few were smashed/broken.
With three pans and lots of helpers (and photographers) the job went quickly, even if it was very hot in the kitchen! Adele took a nap while the cookies cooled.

Adele sampled the cookies after her nap.
Oliver and Loki tried to convince Adele to share with them (but she didn't)
Finally, we were ready to decorate! (Aunt Dee Dee made a little mistake about what time the parade was supposed to be on Friday night - I had it in my head all day that the parade was at 5:00 but our internet was down, so I had no way of verifying this (without going downtown to look at the signs). Around 4:45 as we were piling on winter gear to go to the parade, I checked the internet again and it was working - which was a good thing because the parade was not until 6:00.) So we used the extra time to decorate the cookies.

Adele was a very good sport about wearing a kitchen towel as her "apron."
Mommy showed her how to do one, and then Adele decorated like a pro.
Okay, so she got a little bit messy . . . that's what the newspaper was for!
What's wrong with this cookie, MeMaw?He has an owie knee, just like BaPa!
I sent the decorated cookies home with them.
I wonder how long they lasted.