Honey and Oat Biscuits made by my 2 year old son

I recently taught a 5 week course on family cooking to a group of fantastic people in my area. The course was a huge success and everybody went away with nearly twenty new meals to make for themselves, family and friends. The feedback I got from the course (which was the first one I had taught) was really fantastic and humbling and I was asked shortly afterwards if I fancied teaching a group of toddlers and to get them involved and interested in food. I jumped at the chance straight away without hesitation and had loads of ideas straight away.

I myself have a two and a half year son who I love cooking with. He won't try everything, but he loves touching and handling the food , which in my eyes is a great place to start if you are going to get kids interested in fresh ingredients.

The other day I decided that I was going to have a practice run with one of the lessons which I was going to be doing. The recipe was going to be just general biscuits and I was going to get the kids to decorate them with icing and other goodies, but I decided to drop this idea as I thought that it may be too many sugary ingredients and my whole aim of the lessons was to show them fresh ingredients that are healthier than the processed foods in the supermarkets.

Instead I changed the recipe slightly and decided to make Honey and Oat Biscuits. This cut out the Golden syrup that I was originally going to use and replaced it with a more natural sugar, Honey. This is a more natural product and not a refined sugar. I also loved the idea of incorporating Oats into the recipe as these can be a great source of fibre, something which is lacking in some kids diets.

The ingredients were measured out in cups (the American measure) so that when I teach the little angels, all they have to do is tip out the cups into a mixing bowl. This also make life a little easier for the adults when trying to recreate it at home and I haven't met a toddler yet that is bothered about grams and ounces.

I have also found that the plastic kids cups that you get from Ikea are just short of a cup measure, so are a great alternative if you don't have measuring cups.

Ingredients

1 cup of Self raising flour

1/2 cup of Oats

1/2 cup of artificial sweetener

1 tablespoon of runny honey

100g of butter (I know I said all in cups but most packs of butter have guides on for weight in 50g)

I set up a little table in the kitchen so that we working at his height, and not mine, and donned him in his little chefs outfit or his bakerman outfit as he likes to call it. Then the fun began.

We tipped out the sugar and butter (which was really soft) and beat it with our magic wooden spoons until all the butter and sugar was combined. This is a lot easier with artificial sweetener than caster sugar as the granules are a lot finer. We then added the flour and oats and gave that a good mix and finally squeezed in our runny honey.

The mixture is a bit like a pastry mix, and at this stage we had to get our hands in and press the mixture together to form a soft dough. We then cut the dough in half and rolled out two sausage shape approx. 2cm in thickness. Then with a plastic knife we cut out 1cm thick discs and placed them on a baking sheet that had been lined with greaseproof paper and gently pushed them down.  Leave a couple of centimetres inbetween each biscuits as they do spread slightly.

Off they went into a pre heated oven gas mark 4/170 for 10 minutes until they just started to turn golden brown. They were cooled on a wire rack whilst we cleaned up, which he also loved and I thought was a great way to get kids involved with the day to day chores around the house.

We both sat down with a hot drink and a biscuit each and watched his favourite TV show, Peppa Pig, and he absolutely loved them. He was even calling them his own special biscuits and proclaimed that they were his favourite.

I know that biscuits are not the healthiest of foods, but I think that if you make them yourself and you are in control of the ingredients that go into them, then you can treat your kids to a little naughtiness without the risk of them digesting hundreds of unnecessary calories and sugars.