Cooking with Kids: Baking Snickerdoodles

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One of my favorite things to do when the grandchildren come over – especially my granddaughter- is to bake cookies. Both of my grandchildren enjoy being in the kitchen helping, and they even have their own aprons to wear when they help me in the kitchen.

An easy recipe when starting out cooking with kids is Snickerdoodles, and we have a great recipe here on this site. The easy part about Snickerdoodles is that the ingredients and skills needed are minimal.

My granddaughter easily mastered using my stand mixer (even easier now that she recognizes numbers, as she’s currently 5), rolling the dough in the sugar and cinnamon skills doesn’t require a great amount of dexterity, and scooping the dough to put in the sugar coating is easy enough with this soft cookie dough.

Not only do kids get to get their hands dirty in the process, this gives them a sense of pride in the final product as these cookies turn out perfect each time they are made. Some of the things I’ve made in the past required more skill and they weren’t as easy (see the peanut butter cookie fiasco).

Despite the ease of this dish, I know that Thanksgiving is coming, and I will have two little sous chefs in my kitchen helping me prepare. My granddaughter has helped before, even when she was two. The memory of her at the age of two with a potato peeler and a potato sitting on a chair over the trash can makes me laugh. I didn’t even know she trying to peel a potato. I just had her with me to stay out of her dad’s way outside while he was smoking a turkey. She had seen me peeling potatoes and decided to help (even though I didn’t need any more potatoes peeled).

Children learn from example, and when they watch, they learn to do. I knew how the basics of the kitchen worked long before I attempted to cook my first meal by myself. I made some mistakes, but my parents didn’t mind. The food was edible. The kitchen was still intact.

Currently, my grandchildren still require standing on a chair to reach the counters in my house, but that’s okay. We work how we need to work. It’s not a problem. Just provide a way for them to be successful in the kitchen. Using some type of step stool is important, and if you need a way to keep them from falling backward, you can find some great solutions. Success comes when they feel comfortable performing the tasks.