Teaching children to cook

Kids In The Kitchen

As a busy mum and a self-confessed kitchen phobic I spent years fending off my three children when they asked to make buns or biscuits or anything involving copious amounts of chocolate and icing. The mere thought of rummaging through the back of the cupboard to find those long lost cake tins with the special gadget at the bottom (which always promised to instantly remove your fluffy sponge cake but were more useful for scraping out the soggy bit in the middle) sent me running instantly for the gin and the happy pills.

What I should have realised all that time ago was if my little cherubs actually learned to cook for themselves, spurred on by all that youthful enthusiasm and no embarrassment about soggy sponge cake, then by now in their teenage years it could have been me who shouts 'when's tea?'

So now I've created Minichef Secrets in a bid to get the children off the backs of all you other busy mums and prepare for the future when hopefully you can kick of your shoes, sprawl in front of the tv and have your kids say, 'don't eat all those biscuits, your tea's nearly ready'. Just sit the little darlings down in front of the tv, pop in the Minichef Secrets dvd where Superchef Nigel will teach them how to cook real fish fingers and potato wedges, prepare fruit salad and make scrummy chocolate fridge cake. The dvd is packed full of extra information on kitchen safety, food handling and hygiene rules which is all backed up in the accompanying booklet.

If you can encourage the kids to make you a cuppa while you sit back and oversee the whole operation then you've truly cracked it, yummy mummy teaches the children to cook (with a little help from the Superchef).

Minichef Secrets is available to buy online at www.nigelbrownchef.co.uk/MiniChef_DVD.html

Lisa Barker is the author of Teach Your Children To Cook. This article is linked to The Nigel Brown Cookery Academy