THIS POST IS A PART OF A 31 DAY SERIES TO INVITE OUR KIDS INTO THE KITCHEN. FIND THE REST OF THE SERIES HERE.

A struggle I have heard from many people since starting this series is that cooking with just one child is easy to do, but things start getting complicated when all of their children want to participate.

I certainly get that.

One of the easiest ways I have found to reduce the stress of cooking with everyone at once, is to invite just one child to participate in a small task that I’m already doing. It’s not an event like making pop-tarts or baking a special treat, but just asking for help with one simple task.

Last week, all of my children were playing in other areas of the house while I was making dinner. The last food to prepare for our meal was the drop biscuits. The recipe is super easy and since I had everything else under control, I thought it would be easy enough to ask my middle child if he wanted to help.

I did not announce to everyone that he was helping. I wanted it to be a task just for him, and I wanted to still get dinner on the table pretty quickly.

While my other two children continued to play, my three-year-old unwrapped the butter, combined the dry ingredients, grated the Parmesan cheese, and stirred together the cheese and wet ingredients to make the dough. Once the dough was mixed, he used a spoon to plop small portions onto a baking sheet.

Into the oven went the baking sheet, and off went my son for a few more minutes of play while the biscuits cooked.

Making biscuits together was just a ten minute activity that we could share. I helped him with each step and he enjoyed the satisfaction of my full attention and the accomplishment of a pan-full of warm biscuits with our soup.

If you struggle with cooking with all of your children at once, try to look for little nuggets of opportunities to invite them into the kitchen one at a time. If one child regularly wakes up before the others, maybe she could help with breakfast. If your oldest is awake while the others nap, use that time to prep dinner together. Or do what I did, and ask one child to help without drawing a lot of attention to what’s going on in the kitchen.

Remember that cooking with your kids does not have to be complicated. You are simply inviting them in to join what you are already doing. 

Also, I need to ask you to forgive the quality of the photos this month. Getting a post out everyday is hard work! Also, in this case, I just spontaneously asked my son to come help and he was only clad in his underwear (a regular occurrence around here). Not really blog material, but nothing I wanted to stress at the time. 

Cheesy Drop Biscuits

Ingredients:

• 8 Tbsp butter
• 2 C flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 C cold milk
• 1 C shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 tsp garlic powder

Method:

1 Preheat the oven to 475°.

2. Melt the butter in a heat safe dish. Let cool slightly.

3. Combine the dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. Shred the cheese and add to the dry ingredients.

4. In a liquid measuring cup, combine the milk and the melted butter. Stir together until small clumps of butter form. Pour into the dry ingredients and stir to combine, just until no dry streaks remain.

5. Drop small portions of the dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

6. Bake for 12-15 minutes in preheated oven.

An alternative to the garlic cheddar biscuits is Parmesan and black pepper. Substitute 3/4 C grated Parmesan cheese for the cheddar, and 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper for the garlic powder. 

Find the rest of the Kids in the Kitchen posts on the series page.