Tiny Chef

Tiny Chef Celebrations

Learning to cook has become very trendy and increasingly so for our kids, so we asked our Facebook family to share their experiences with cooking parties and get togethers. As always we thoroughly enjoyed their suggestions. We would love to hear any ideas you have for cooking games, parties or nights in – find us on Facebook or join the conversation below.

Sarah We are about to have one next month for my nearly 6. The first thing I did was to talk to one of the mums whose children have allergies, which helped me decide what we will make, use to decorate and how to make it safe. The kids will roll out pizza dough and put on topping, decorate cupcakes to take home, bake allergy free biscuits, grape necklaces. Each child will have their own place mat, apron and will sit down to eat the lunch they helped make.

Tanya  Every second Friday night we have a kids cooking night with friends. Usually paella or San Choy bow. There is a production line of kids chopping all the ingredients. They just love it, and it is amazing how much they eat when they are involved! They have become so good at it that my 9 year old begs me to let him cook dinner himself a couple of nights a week!

Rebecca We have played a Mini Master Chef game at a few of our kids parties over the past year or so. We take a very small amount of some ingredients (e.g. mint, brown rice, spaghetti, lime etc.) and place them individually in covered bowels. The kids then take turns coming into the room, guessing what each item is and writing it down. For the older kids we use a blind fold and for the younger kids we just let them look, taste and smell. It is really cute to watch and they have such a good time giggling over what each item is!

Suzanne  We had a high tea party for Miss Six. All guests made the sandwiches, iced and decorated their own cakes, slices and biscuits. To keep it simple we had all the ingredients laid out before the party and the kids simple had to put it together. We still made a huge mess, but the kids had a fantastic time and it was a great success.

Belinda  My 10 year old daughter and 4 of her mates get together every 6 months for a 'racklette'. Each child has a 'station' in our kitchen and each one is assigned their own tasks. They chop and prepare different varieties of meats, vegetables, cheeses and sauces. Using the hotplate on top of the racklette to cook the meats and the grill underneath to brown and melt the cheeses, the kids invent their own concoctions using their own mini frypans and tongs. We get to see some very interesting creations and we always make sure there is enough left over for the mum's to enjoy afterwards! The kids have a wonderful time and so do the adults and best of all, it teaches them valuable lessons about fresh food - how easy it is to prepare, how good it is for them and how much yummier it is then processed garbage!

Jack We have created our own cooking game for parties with our kids. We work out what we are going to make for the particular party, for example our most recent one was rice paper rolls. We write all the ingredient names on to pieces of paper and put them into a hat. We try to make sure that we list even the smallest of ingredients (like salt) to make it harder. We take a dice and the kids roll the dice to work out who gets to go first and so on. They then take turns to pull one ingredient out of the hat. The first child to work out what we are making wins. We then of course made the rice paper rolls!