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I think most places around the country are about to start half term (I know, it seems like they just went back). There is good news, roads will generally be quieter. But homes with kids may not be! So this is a perfect opportunity to get kids in the kitchen and get them busy cooking up a storm. There is no better way to get them involved with food than getting them involved in it’s preparation.

So, this post is a bit of a collaboration between me and Mini Gourmet Girl, as MGG has acquired a number of cookbooks over her 8 years (can’t think where she gets that habit from) and she has some favourites, as do I, for really getting stuck in in the kitchen. Here goes:

The Usborne Cookbook for Children

1. The Usborne Cookbook for Children - this is MGG’s favourite, and you can regularly find her poring over it before coming to tell me what she wants to cook. There’s a good mix of savoury and sweet dishes, both hot and cold, and every step is well-illustrated. There are even useful chef’s tips, like how to make olives less salty, and covers everything from basics like rice and bread through to a very scrummy chocolate cake.

Kids' Kitchen

2. Kids’ Kitchen by Fiona Bird – we’ve been playing with this one recently, as Fiona and her publishers kindly sent us a copy. I like the format: individual wipe clean recipe cards, plus some how to cards as well. The colour coding helps them work through all the five major food groups of the Government’s healthy eating initiatives, covering fruit to grains, veg to oils. The steps are clearly written and easy to follow, and the results have so far been delicious. And all the kids I’ve had in the kitchen have loved having their own card to work from and I love being able to wipe them down! I think this is an innovative and interesting approach to kids cookbooks, and worth a look.

3. The River Cottage Family Cookbook – I think this is probably my favourite book for cooking with MGG. I love the explanations of the basics of cooking, of helping kids to understand why things work and how. MGG loves the Victoria Sponge recipe, where you weigh your eggs and match everything else up. This is probably a great book for sevens and over, and will probably be a book they dip in and out of for years.

Family Food

4. Family Food: A New Approach to Cooking by Heston Blumenthal- this one must be for the molecular gastronomes of the future! Actually, it’s a lot less  contrived than you might think, but will still appeal to the slightly more geeky cook. We have cooked less from this one, but MGG has enjoyed doing things like making cartouches for sauces and things. It’s worth having just to marvel that this is the first cookbook that Heston wrote, as I don’t think many of us would have thought that family cooking would have been where his writing started out.

5. The Gastrokid Cookbook: Feeding a Foodie Family in a Fast-Food World- this is a great all round book, both for cooking with, and for, kids to help expand their food horizons. The recipes are tasty, quick to put together and guaranteed to generate clean plates all round! I also lover their courgette hummus for being antoher way to get rid of the courgette glut at the end of the summer!

I honestly don’t think it matters much what you cook with kids, as long as you keep it fairly simple and quick, as they tend not to have great attention spans. Small cakes always work well for me as you get two bites of activity: one to make them and one to decorate them! Go on, go mad with the sprinkles! Don’t rely in your local Sainsbury’s, order now from somewhere like Splat or Cupcake Style. Of course they’ll be on sugar overload, but isn’t that what holidays are for?

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