Finally a week when nothing unfortunate happened while cooking with the toddlers! No slicing my finger, no breaking the blender, just good old baking. I still can’t get over how well our twelve kiddos behave while we cook. My goal is to always cook from scratch which always takes more time but I feel like it is a much better experience for them.
One way we found to make the time go by faster (other than their usual starring eagerly at the friend who is helping at the time), is to let them smell, touch and taste some of the ingredients. This week, as we prepared cornbread muffins, we let the children taste corn kernels and honey. We also asked them to guess what the various ingredients were and explained their role, like baking soda.
Cornbread Muffins
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 2/3 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup cornmeal
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 cup milk
- 3/4 cup frozen corn kernels, thawed
What’s Next?
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease or line 12 muffin cups.
- In a large bowl, cream together butter, sugar, honey, eggs and salt. Mix in flour, cornmeal and baking powder; blend thoroughly. Stir in milk and corn. Pour or spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
- Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.
The muffins were really good and the children really seemed to like them. And, by that, I mean most of them devoured them. A couple of them cracked me up as they picked out every single piece of corn and ate the muffins. I guess I should be proud of their fine motor skills, right? 🙂
This week, we will celebrate Thanksgiving by making a sweet potato casserole to share at the school feast. I bet they’ll be happy to test the mini-marshmallows for me!
The Hungry Quebbie 