This article has a few fun baking ideas you can try with your children. Children will look back with joy at the time you spend in the kitchen creating edible treats. It really is a special time together.

Fun Baking Ideas: Making Easter Nests

Today the boys enjoyed making Easter Nests, it was a fun and easy activity suggested by nanny. It was a perfect filler for a quieter day of our holidays and great to get us in the mood for Easter.

Ingredients

For making Easter nests you will need:

400g bar of Cadburys

6 Shredded Wheat Biscuits

A Packet of Cadburys Mini Eggs

Made 10 nests

Such a simple recipe and one of my favourite fun baking ideas!  But I assure you the end result was very tasty, the hardest part was trying to stop Grandad from eating the chocolate and mini eggs…

Method

First using brute force bash the shredded wheat biscuits to oblivion (ideally inside a sandwich bag to minimise mess!)

Melt chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water

Afterwards add the bashed up Shredded Wheat

Stir until covered in chocolate

Then fill a cake case with a nest shape of the chocolaty mix

We added some chocolate eggs (the more the merrier!)

Then leave to chill in the fridge for an hour

Hey presto you have an almost life like nest!  We were really happy with how they turned out.  I am so glad nanny got the boys making these.

Your very lucky I managed to get a photograph as they were chomped up pretty quickly, the boys did great! We normally only ever make Rice Krispies variants of this, but Shredded Wheat is our new definite favourite!

Fun Baking Ideas: Making Peppermint Creams

We followed a recipe on the Steenbergs website to make Peppermint Creams. You do not need many ingredients so its a really easy fun activity to do with children.

Ingredients

450g of icing sugar

125ml of condensed milk

A few drops of Steenbergs Organic Peppermint Extract

150g dark chocolate

How To Make Peppermint Creams

Method

Add the icing sugar and condensed milk and the Peppermint Extract together, and then knead until smooth. If it is sticking to your hands then add more icing sugar, that saved the day for us but think youngest had been over generous with the extract.

Check the flavour and see if it is minty enough for your taste! In our case it definitely was… but if not add a little bit more. It goes surprisingly far so go easy on the extract.

Dust out some icing sugar and roll out your ball of minty sugary yummyness to about 5mm thickness or if you like thick Peppermint Creams knock yourself out.

Cut into shape (we used the top of an icing pipette which was just the right size for us).

Leave to dry, after a couple of hours melt the chocolate and dunk half the Peppermint Cream in to coat it. Leave to set.

WARNING: Try not to let your youngest eat all the icing sugar/chocolate whilst he makes the Peppermint Creams.

These were delicious according to the boys. They wanted to eat them all, but have managed to save some till tomorrow… a token few that survived the mass Peppermint Cream culling!

Fun Baking Ideas: Making Mini Battenberg

Preparation Time: 30 Minutes

Baking Time: 25 Minutes

Eating Time: Considerably less!

Portions: 4 (unless you increase all the ingredients like we did! why make cake, when you can just as easily make MORE cake!).

Mini Battenberg Ingredients

150 grams Unsalted Butter softened, plus a little for greasing

150 grams Caster Sugar (Silver Spoon Homegrown)

3 Free Range Eggs (Happy Eggs)

150 grams Self Raising Flour (Allinson Nature Friendly)

30ml Just Milk

0.50 tsp Pink Food Colour (Silver Spoon Create)

50 grams Apricot Jam or you could make your own jam with dried fruits (just don’t forget to add more fluids as they don’t have as much moisture as fresh fruits).

200 grams Ready to Roll Marzipan (Silver Spoon Create)

How to make Mini Battenberg

Preheat the oven to 200°C, Fan180°C, 400°F/Gas 6

Beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs a little at a time, adding a little of the flour if the mixture looks a little curdled.

Fold in the flour. Add a little milk to the mixture, to make the mixture dropping consistency.

Pour half of the cake mixture into another bowl. Add a drop of pink food colouring to one of the bowls and stir well.

Grease and base line a 15cm square cake tin. Fold a 15cm square of foil into a thick strip and place down the middle of the tin so to divide the tin into two equal parts. Spoon the pink cake mix into one side and the plain mix into the other side.

Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes, or until springy to the touch. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

Lightly dust a surface with icing sugar and roll the marzipan into a 23cm x 23cm rectangle.

Trim the cakes to the same size, and then cut both halves into quarters lengthways.

In a pan, heat the apricot jam until it becomes runny.

Place one of the pink pieces of cake onto a work surface and brush one side with jam. Lay a yellow piece next to it on the jam side and push together.

Brush the top with more jam. Top the yellow piece of cake with a pink piece and vice versa. Brush the outside edges of the cake with more jam.

Cut the rolled marzipan so that it’s just slightly longer than the cake. Wrap it around the cake, brushing the edges with a little jam to seal them together. Trim off the excess marzipan at the ends. Repeat until all the cake and marzipan is used.

Then enjoy eating…