Baking Time

Toddler age: 3.5 years

Materials you'll need:
-any dessert recipe and ingredients for said recipe

As the holidays approach, many of us don our aprons, dust off our cookbooks, and warm up our ovens in anticipation of baking delectable goodies for our families and friends. This is the perfect thing to get our toddlers involved in. Toddlers love nothing more than standing on a stool, wooden spoon in hand, helping mom. Yes, baking this way takes a little longer, but just think of it this way. You are double-tasking, spending 30 minutes of quality time with your child, and creating something delicious!

The 3-year-old boy loves to help me in the kitchen, and helping with chocolate chip cookies was no exception. Standing on his stool did not allow him the access he felt he needed to the bowl, so he just got on the counter to do the job...

Of course, I needed to remind him to stir slowly and carefully and to try not to eat too much flour, and of course, I had to take over after a time, but this kept him busy for about ten minutes.

His next task was to unwrap the sticks of butter...

This, too, took about ten minutes (yes, I know, hard to believe), with continual reminders to try not to take bites out of the sticks of butter, but he really did enjoy this job.

Next, he used the butter wrappers to grease the cookie sheets. This took about 5 minutes and kept him busy while I did the final mixing. Again, I had to go back and get the spots he missed, but still, quality time.

His last task was to dump in the chocolate chips, which was his favorite...

All in all, the 3-year-old boy had a great time, I felt like a good mom, and we ended up with 4 dozen perfectly baked chocolate chip cookies!

Here's the recipe we used....

Ingredients:
4 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 1/2 cups refined sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups chocolate chips

Directions:

Step 1: In a large bowl, combine flour, salt, and baking soda.

Step 2: In a medium bowl, cream butter and sugars.

Step 3: To the sugar mixture, blend in eggs.

Step 4: Add the vanilla.

Step 5: Add the sugar mixture to the flour mixture and combine.

Step 6: Stir in the chocolate chips.

Step 7: Roll into one inch balls and bake at 375 degrees on greased cookie sheet for 8 to 12 minutes, until very lightly browned.

Enjoy and have fun with your toddler!