Fun kid's recipes - Gingerbread Men and stars & vegetable fingers

Going forward, I will be posting weekly updates from my Monday Healthy Eating Afterschool Club. Although we do a little bit of baking, we predominantly prepare and cook healthy dishes. The children are aged between 4 and 6.

Today was a very messy class but lots of fun. We started off making Gingerbread Men (or women as one of the children corrected me). We made these first as they needed to bake and cool in time for the end of the class. The kids had lots of fun watching me make the dough in the food processor, rolling out the dough themselves and cutting out the biscuits.

Gingerbread People and stars 

Ingredients:

350g plain flour

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

100g butter

175g soft light brown sugar

1 egg

4 tablespoons honey (or golden syrup)

Method: 

 

Preheat oven to 190C/Gas 5

1. Put the flour, ginger, cinnamon and soda into a bowl and rub in the butter
2. Add sugar and stir in the honey and egg to make a firm dough
3. Roll out to about 5mm thick and cut out your gingerbread men. If you don't have a gingerbread man cutter you can use any other biscuit cutters you have to hand
4. Place the biscuits on greased baking trays (spaced out, as they will spread) and bake for 10 to 15 minutes until golden brown. Leave to firm up for a couple of minutes before placing on a wire rack to cool.

We then made vegetable fingers (or balls). 99 children out of 100 devour these croquette type delicacies. They are one of my signature dishes and they go down a storm. They are messy to make but kids love getting involved so do try them at home. I promise you your kids will love them. We added peas and broccoli to the mash today but sweetcorn is also a great addition.

Vegetable fingers
 

Ingredients:

For the filling;

4 medium potatoes, peeled and quartered 

½ mug tinned or fresh sweetcorn

½ mug of peas

For the coating:

1 egg, beaten lightly or milk

½ mug of breadcrumbs

Pepper to taste

Method:

1. Boil the potatoes for 15 minutes until soft. Allow to cool
2. Cook the peas and sweetcorn. Allow to cool
3. In a bowl, pass the potatoes through a ricer (or mash with a potato masher) and add the sweetcorn and peas
4. With your hands, mix all the ingredients together and then shape into small patties, balls or fingers, coat in the egg/milk and then breadcrumbs and fry in a little oil until the outer edges are crisp.
5. Serve with your favourite sauce i.e. ketchup.