Share This Post

Family Life

5 fun cookbooks to get kids in the kitchen with you

5 fun cookbooks to get kids in the kitchen with you

by

Laura Falin

posted in Life

Happy holidays, everyone!

I hope you’re enjoying your time with family and friends and having a lovely week of celebrating. I always find that everything leads up to a fever pitch on Christmas, and then we spend the rest of the week decompressing – hanging around in fuzzy clothes, playing in the snow, maybe going to see Christmas lights we didn’t have time to visit yet. After a hectic first part of the month, I really like spending this week between Christmas and New Year’s just taking it easy with the kids.

If we’re home, we’ll play games, or do puzzles…and I enjoy cooking with the kids, too. This is the perfect week for it, because we don’t have to rush to get dinner on the table after school and everything else. We can dawdle, and stick our fingers in the batter, and turn up the music and have a good time in the kitchen together. Aside from fun family time, kids who cook tend to eat more varieties of foods, and it even introduces them to math and science concepts.

Here are a few of our favorite cookbooks for kids – one of the things I love is that almost all of these books are spiral-bound, so they actually stay open to your recipe page, and you’re not breaking the binding. Most of these books say they’re for kids 5 and up, but if you’re willing to do more work yourself, you can start them younger.

cookbooks for kids

1.  Cooking With Curious Chef 

This cookbook contains 36 recipes for kids to make and also includes nutrition tips and food facts without being boring and preachy about it. We also have the Curious Chef Prep Kit, which includes a kid-safe knife, vegetable peeler, produce scrubber, and more. The cookbook is recommended for kids 4 and up, the prep kit for kids 5 and up. (Cooking With Curious Chef; Amazon, $19.99)

cookbooks for kids

2.  Better Homes & Gardens New Junior Cook Book

I had a (much-older!) version of this when I was a kid and I made every recipe in it. It’s been updated several times since then, but it still begins with an introduction to cooking terms, instructions on how to measure ingredients and practice food safety, and other important notes for beginners. The book has 65 recipes, with pictures and stories to go along with each. Kids can make breakfasts, lunches, dinners, snacks, and healthy treats. (Better Homes & Gardens New Junior Cook BookAmazon, $12.24)

cookbooks for kids

3. Fix-It and Forget-It Kids’ Cookbook: 50 Favorite Recipes To Make In A Slow Cooker

While this has recipes for every meal, we like to make the snacks and drinks best. Toss in ingredients for Crunchy Snack Mix or Minty Hot Chocolate, head outside and play, then come in and have a tasty treat waiting for you! (Fix-It and Forget-It Kids’ CookbookAmazon, $8.98)

cookbooks for kids

4. Mermaid Cookbook

The Mermaid Cookbook has exactly what you’d think – frothy floats, some snacks, sweet little cookies and cakes, and various other treats. It’s not big on hearty meals, but it would be fun to spend an afternoon making Sea Turtle Cookies or Little Luau Cakes and Sea Foam Floats and having a mermaid party in the dead of winter. (Mermaid CookbookAmazon, $12.08)

cookbooks for kids

5. The Everything Kids’ Cookbook

More than 90 recipes that cover everything from pancakes to tacos to peanut butter squares. There’s a scale to indicate how hard each recipe is, so kids can start easy and work their way up, and there are recipes for holidays along with everyday standards. (The Everything Kids’ CookbookAmazon, $7.74)

Do you have a favorite dish you make with your children?

We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program which allows us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

 

Share This Post