How We Bake With Our Kids
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Welcome to Baking Week on the Strategist, where we’ve been obsessively researching and testing all the bakeware, tools, and gadgets that can make you a better baker. For more, head to ourBaking Week hub.
As longtime friends, sustainable-food veterans, andnew moms, we were naturally thrilled by the prospect of feeding ourbabiessolid food. But when the time came, we were both surprised by how challenging it felt to keep everyone fed in a way that was tasty, nutritious, and pleasurable (enough) for the cooks. When our kids were just over a year old, we started a Substack calledThe Green Spoonto capture our learnings in real time. In the intervening two and a half years, we’ve built an archive of recipes for family cookery.
Now that our kids are just shy of 4 and increasingly keen to help — “help,” that is — with the cooking, our experiments in the kitchen have evolved from focusing on what to cookforthem to what to cookwiththem. Baking together has been the obvious place to start — not just because they’re most excited about tasting the fruits of their labor but because the gear is the most fun, too. Measuring cups? Sifters? Fuhgeddaboudit. As a result, we’ve been scouring the internet for our favorite nonplastic,cute, and maximally-fun baking tools and accessories to use with our kids. We’ve also included our oat-y peanut-butter-cookie recipe, the star of which is a toddler’s best friend: sprinkles.
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Equal parts toy and tool, these measuring cups are not only good for little helpers to start learning how to scoop and measure ingredients but, thanks to the magnetic feature, they alsostay f*¢k!ng togetherin a drawer without one of those annoying rings, thus allowing for tidy storage (and ensuring you haven’t lost a critical cup in the chaos of the kitchen).
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Not only do our kids love cooking with all these adorable tools, but the apron in this set is SO CUTE! Designed by Amanda Jane Jones, it has sort of a vintage vibe and is made of a soft, comfy cotton. The knife and peeler are like catnip for our 3 ½-year-olds, but they’re legit (read: sharp) kitchen tools, so we supervise the heck out of them whenever they’re in action. The finger guard is especially clutch.
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Our pal, the acclaimed bakerNatasha Pickowicz, recently extolled the virtues of the mini-muffin inaGreen Spoonpost. To paraphrase, mini-muffins bake more quickly than bigger muffins, meaning the crumb is always more tender with a springier top and crispier edges. Plus they’re bite-size, which is to say alsolunch box–size,so they’re easy to pack for school or hand to a kid as a snack on the go. A mini-muffin pan like this one makes baking muffins — with or without cup liners — a total breeze.
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You don’t really need liners if you’re using a silicone muffin pan, but they’re still fun to have for festive occasions. We discovered these, and now they are the only cupcake liners we will ever use for the rest of time. Mini. Pink. Metallic. We’re as charmed by them as our princess-dress-wearing 3 ½-year-old daughters are.
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Our kids remain somewhat averse to noisy kitchen appliances (our daughters call theblender“scary” and will leave the room when it’s on) but are totally in love with a kitchen tool that can pass for a toy. Fanny’s daughter recently discovered the old-school eggbeater at her grandmother’s house. Since returning from that Christmas visit, she routinely asks whyallmeals cannot be prepared with an eggbeater. The good news is it’s great for getting a toddler to help out in the production of morning scrambled eggs, which generally results in more scrambled-egg consumption. It’s also a less arm-fatiguing tool for whipping cream or egg whites than a standard whisk.
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Another old-school kitchen tool that masquerades as a toy. The crank! The magical “snow” of flour that emerges from the bottom as your kid cranks that crank! The genuine improvements to your baking that will result from you sifting your flours and baking agents before mixing! It’s all wins with this gadget.
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Sprinkles are extremely important to young children. So if you’re going to have children, or bake with children, you’re going to have to accept the multicolored, waxy, sweetened confetti we call “sprinkles” into your heart. Which is why we were genuinely thrilledto discover that someone went ahead and figured out how to make sprinkles as non-nasty as possible: Supernatural sprinkles come in tons of fun sizes, shapes, and shades and are cane-sweetened and colored only with natural vegetable dyes. We especially love thetiny spherical rainbow nonpareils.
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Nothing showcases baked treats better than a “fancy” decorated platter or cake stand. In general, we love enamel serveware for our kiddos — enamel cups, plates, and bowls are cheap and cheerful and can take a fair amount of abuse from small diners. Etsy is teeming with vintage enamelware decorated with sweet, delightfully kitschy patterns. It’s a great place to search forplatters,more platters,bowlsandplates. For non-vintage, we love theFalcon Enamelware Cake Standin the cheery red hue. When it’s not on cake duty, it serves as a fruit plinth in Fanny’s kitchen.
Sprinkle Peanut-Butter Cookies Recipe
Good for breakfast (why not?). Good for snack. Good for school lunch (as long as you don’t have to contend with a nut ban). Oat flour enhances the nuttiness of these cookies and makes them gluten free. The peanut butter makes them soft, moist, and chewy, and because they’re sweetened with coconut sugar and just a bit of maple syrup, they’re not cloyingly sweet. Make them with or without the sprinkles, but know that little rainbow dots will make them extra cute (and extra alluring to little people).
Ingredients
½ cup (4 tablespoons) of unsalted butter, melted
½ cup of coconut sugar
¼ cup of maple syrup
1 cup of smooth, natural peanut butter
1 large egg
1 ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of baking soda
½ teaspoon of fine sea salt
2 cups of rolled oats or 1 ¾ cups of oat flour
⅓ cup ofnaturally-dyed rainbow nonpareils
The Method
1. Preheat your oven to 350F, and line a large sheet pan with a silicone baking mat or sheet of parchment paper.
2. If making your own oat flour (recommended!), add the rolled oats to a high-speed blender and blend on high for about 30 seconds until it yields a fine flour. Combine the oat flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.
3. Combine the melted butter with the coconut sugar and maple syrup in a large bowl and beat with an electric hand mixer on medium-high speed until dissolved, lighter in color, and totally combined.
4. Add the egg and vanilla, beat again, then add the peanut butter and beat until well combined.
5. Finally, add the oat-flour mix and, using a spoon (or your clean hands), mix the dough until it is fully incorporated. It will feel oily and tacky — this is normal.
6. Pour the sprinkles into a shallow bowl.
7. Use your hands to form balls of dough approximately 1 ½ inches in diameter. Holding each ball with your fingertips, carefully roll one half in the sprinkles, then place it, sprinkle side up, on the prepared baking sheet (if you decide to skip the sprinkles, dust with a little extra coconut sugar instead after the following flattening step). Use the bottom of a flat, wide glass to flatten it until it’s about a ½-inch thick. Repeat with remaining dough.
8. Use the back of a fork to press a pattern on four sides of each cookie, then bake for eight to ten minutes until the edges are just drying up and set (the centers should still be quite soft). Let them cool completely on the baking sheet.
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