I always make a point to do some kitchen activities with the children during school holidays, like the time when I taught them to cook from young in simple dishes. I will do it more frequent with the kids but you know, there is limited energy after work and weekends are usually outdoors. And over one long weekend 2 weeks ago, I decided to do a first time baking for myself and first time baking with the kids.
I never had an oven. And one wrong concept is I thought that oven has to be in-built which we did not have it when we moved to this house, and portable ovens are too expensive for my limited baking. Then a close girl friend told me that ovens nowadays are very affordable and it is worth a small investment just to have fun baking with the children. So, I went to scout for one cheap oven and this oven cost me less than $100!
Well, I can treat it like a toy to have fun with the kids. And guess what? The moment the oven arrived, the hubby made these:
Roast Pork with incredible crispy pork skin on top!! We could save some $$$ roasting our own pork and this was better than stall bought ones. The hubby indeed has a flair for cooking.
Our first baking was a very simple one – BUTTER COOKIES! And I must say it was a great success as the kids loved them very much. The cookies were incredibly crispy and we made tiny cookies so that it is easy for little hands and eating is not such a mess as they pop one after the other into the mouth.
Recipe for easy peasy butter cookies (Click here for the original recipe):
Preparation time – 15 min
Baking time – 8-10 min for each tray of cookies
Ready in 1 hour 30 min
- 1 salted/unsalted butter (250g) – We used salted butter.
- 2, 2/3 cups all purpose flour
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt (If you use salted butter, you may skip this ingredient)
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Next…
Cream together the flour and butter till light and fluffy
Beat in the egg
Stir in the vanilla extract
Combine the flour and salt and stir into the mixture
Cover the dough and chill for one hour
Preheat oven to 200 deg C.
Use your fingers and hands to make small little domes the size of a 20 cent coin, put them on cookie sheets or directly on baking tray.
Bake for 8-10 minutes in the preheated oven or till you see light brown at the edges.
Over here, you have to be careful, as after one trial and error, with this limited function oven, we have to first put the tray on the lower rack and turn the knob to bottom heating, then once we see light brown edges, we took out the tray and transfer to upper rack and turn the knob to top heating. When we first did it, we used top and bottom heating and ended up top part brown and crispy but bottom part half baked.
Tada! The yummy butter cookies are done!
Isn’t this simple?
This is a good bonding activity with the children. They can help out in the preparation stage but need supervision for baking stage.
The next time I will probably try a cup cake or cheesecake recipe 🙂
Share with me if you have simple recipes for baking!
That pork looks delicious! Yummy!
I just recently got an oven after not having one for 5 years. It was like I had to retrain myself how to bake things. I still only use it occasionally because I never think to use it (and Z won’t eat the cookies and cakes we make, so I end up eating them ALL… not so great for my waistline haha).
Also these cookies look so good and easy! I may have to try making them, and just making less so I don’t eat 2 dozen of them. LOL
Doesn’t Z like baked goodies? Maybe if you involve her she’ll like it 🙂 I try not to bake too much either. I fear I’ll get so sick of them that I will stop baking anymore lol!
Oh she helps for sure, but licking the beaters is the extent of her sweet eatings. She is much more into dairy treats or salty treats. So unlike me… 🙂
My kids, especially the son, loooooves to bake! It is his favourite thing to do on one-on-one times too. His favourites are oven made pancakes, berry crumble pie and rolls (wait, maybe I have enforced that one 😉 )
Funny though, I never thought there’d be a family kitchen without an oven. But of course, most of your food is stove cooked where as I make plenty of simple oven casseroles, so easy to just stick them in the oven after work and have time to play with kids while waiting for it to be ready.
We have a toaster and it serves us well most of the times because as what you said, we use stove cooking all the time. Now that I have oven, there are so much to do with it. Berry crumble pie sounds delicious. Do you have a recipe to share on the blog? I’ll love to try that out!
I’m so glad you splurged and got an oven!! I think that you can have so much fun with it – and love that the hubby made some food right off the bat!! Oh – homemade pizza!! You can buy the dough and then let the kids make their own personal pizza and bake it!
But, for easy cookies, I love Peanut Butter cookies.
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Preparation
Stir together 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 large egg, and 1 tsp. vanilla extract in a large bowl until combined; shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place balls 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets, and flatten gently with tines of a fork. Bake at 325° for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to wire racks to cool.
Variations: Evenly press 1 cup of your desired addition, such as chocolate morsels, chocolate-coated toffee bits, or chopped peanuts, onto the top of prepared cookie dough on baking sheets; bake as directed.
Yes I remember your peanut butter cookies! Thanks for your time to share the recipe here!! This will be my next baking fun. And pizza! Almost forgot about it. Great!
Mmmm….Yum! I’m feeling hungry already! I shall read more about your baking adventures before deciding on whether I should get an oven too! Hehe!
Thanks! I do not have many baking adventures yet. Let me try to up that frequency of baking fun 🙂