Shrove Tuesday, a.k.a. Pancake day, really crept up on me this year; probably something to do with a full moon on the spring equinox, and so a really early Easter with a chance of mad bunnies. So his morning I’ve trialled a few pancake making devices, some things that you can rustle up around the home to help kids learn to flip them like a pro.

You will need
frying pans - though big heavy ones are great for cooking the real pancakes in, for kids to help they need one they can lift
old bits of cloth and cardboard
an easy-to-dry kitchen

for the pancakes (makes 12-ish)
100g plain flour, sifted
2 eggs
200ml milk mixed with 75ml water
50g butter

Get the kids to mix up the flour, eggs and milky bits as soon as they come in from school… this kind of batter can be used straight away, but works better if you let it sit for an hour or so before frying up.

Now it’s time to make your pseudo-pancakes for practice time.  Draw and cut out circles of fabric/cardboard roughly the same size as the base of your frying pans.  Take these bits of material and soak them in tepid water… or chilled if you’re feeling mean.  Now teach the kids to flip them with a deft forward-up-and-back motion of the wrist.  Do it well and the water won’t spray; too quick or too hard and everyone starts to get wet.  High arcing flips to land the damp pseudo-cake on ones own head are to be commended.

After a little experimentation I recommend using the thighs of old jeans as the material of choice.  It gets good and damp, yet slides well out of pans.  Felt is a tad too sticky when wet, old flannels are a too crumply, art-foam sheets form little suction cups on the pan, whilst thick cardboard - though initially good - starts to come apart after 10 minutes or so.

Mop the kitchen floor and attempt with real pancakes.

Pancakes are a great way to introduce kids to safe stove top cooking.  As you have to hang around the cooker it gives them more time to watch and see what happens to the flame/halogen top, than your usual stick on a pan and bring to boil.  So get one pan good and hot, drop in a lump of butter until it sizzles.  Then take the batter mixture and pour out a couple of tablespoons, I’ve always found this is best done from a ladle so it all arrives at the same time whilst giving a long handle for littler hands.  Cook for less than a minute until you can pull back a corner and see that the bottom has gone all brown.  Now it’s flipping time.  Hot pan, check for others, two hands, flip and catch.  Award points for any pancakes that make it up to the light fixtures or maybe give a special topping for the most fragmented, so that all feel encouraged.

Depending on age you might like to flip with both you and the child holding the handle, or perhaps you might pre-cook a handful and slide them off into a cold frying pan to be slung around with abandon.

Enjoy (with a squeeze of lemon and a sprinkle of sugar)

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This ones not getting filed under ‘be healthy‘ but just sometimes I need to step back from the news and teach the value of treat and restraint.

Squish is an increasable edible substance. Somewhere between pink alien goo and bliss. But very easy for little cooks to make as a present.

You will need
quater of a 500g box of icing sugar
quarter of a pat of unsalted butter
a splash of milk
half a teaspoon of vanilla essence
one growed-up handful of marshmallows, or two little-one handfuls
some coloured sprinkles
a flat tin lined with greaseproof paper
a little saucepan

Double check, line the tin with greaseproof or lose it forever. Sift the sugar into a bowl. Melt butter in a little saucepan… hot, hot, hot. Add the milk, vanilla and marshmallows to the butter; stirring until gloopy. Pour goo into the middle of the sifted sugar, quickly mix out the lumps and pour into the lined tin. Really… make sure it’s lined or you’ll never remove the squishy. When cool enough pat some sprinkles in to the squishyness and bung into the fridge for a while… about two hours seemed to work. Turn it over, pop it out and slice it up.

“I shall call you squishy, and you shall be mine, and you will be my squishy.” Dory

Enjoy… in moderation and as much restraint as you can all manage.

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One of my earliest school memories is in making peppermint creams in the small ‘cooking’ kitchen of my primary school. I suppose cooking is a grand word for what is essentially mixing, squishing and leaving, but we all have to start somewhere.

There are two entwined recipes here; as a parent I make my fondants with raw egg white, but as a minder I’d have substituted in water and put up with them going crinkly around the edges.  I’m lucky though, to have a secret weapon in my garden. For some two years now we’ve been raising the welikeplay HQ chickens, and so I can guarantee really fresh, healthy and above all salmonella-free eggs.

You will need
half a box of icing sugar
1 smallish egg (or 5 tblsp water)
a couple of drops of peppermint essence and a drop of food colouring
greaseproof parchment lightly sprayed with sunflower oil

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Spent some time with Girl No.1 this morning making some banana bread to take home with her. I’m a great fan of banana bread, as its a fairly frequent occurrence at ‘chez welikeplay’ to find some blackened ‘nanas in the depth of the fruit box. Not to self: check the organic box out on the day it arrives, do not resorting to in-box composting.

You will need
15 min messy time + 1 hour in the oven
3 or 4 squidgy bananas
a childs handful of diddy bits of apricot or sultanas or whatever is lurking in your cupboard
zest from a lemon if you’ve got it
100g butter
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
300g flour
bread tin

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