Welcome to our site which is  all about kids cooking (sometimes dinner and sometimes just dessert, like today when we decided to make a tie-dye cake: both inside and out).  To learn more about how to make this cake, read on.  To learn more about how our site got started, read the next post.

For the tie-dye cake, we made a simple white cake and split the batter into 4 bowls.  We used food coloring to dye the batter red, yellow, blue and green (20 drops each).  Then we poured each color of batter into a 13 x 9 pan, one cup at a time, and baked it (we made a few swirls on top for fun and even had enough batter for a few cupcakes).

After the cake was done, we decided to cut it in half to make a two layer cake.  We frosted the first layer with just white frosting but for the top, we made two colors of frosting: yellow and purple.  We spread yellow frosting all over the top and then put dabs of purple frosting on top of that. Then we used a chopstick to make cool swirls.  The interesting thing that from the top of the cake the blue and the green looked really similar in color.  However when we cut into the cake we could clearly see blue and green.

Welcome back. Easter is a big deal for us so we made a feast, including leg of lamb, roasted brussels sprouts, hasselback baked potatoes, aspargus and our homemade butterhorn rolls.  We started marinating the lamb yesterday and also started the butterhorn rolls.

Here’s what the before and after photos, including the final spread and Dad’s plate:

The Lamb:

Cooking the lamb was pretty simple because we had done the marinade before: we just kept checking it to make sure it was cooked to 145 degrees (medium rare) but not over done:

Hasselback potatoes:

First, we stirrred together melted butter, olive oil, chives and some salt and pepper in a small bowl.

Then we placed each potato between the handles of 2 and sliced the potato into thin slices, leaving a little unsliced so they stay together. (The spoon handles will prevent you from slicing the potato all the way through). After that, we put the potatoes on a baking sheet and brush on the butter mixture, making sure to get in between all the slices.

Then we baked it until tender and crisp for 75 minutes.  (The recipe calls for less time, but last time we made these, and followed the recipe, they weren’t completely cooked through at the bottom.  This time they were perfect

Brussels Sprouts and Asparagus:

For the brussel sprouts, we quartered them and tossed them with olive oil and salt and pepper.  Then we roasted them for about 15 minutes, removed them from the oven (turned) and adding chopped, delicous bacon. For the asparugus, it was so fresh all we had to do was steam it  and top it with grated parmesean.

Butterhorn Rolls:

All we had to do for these was heat them up (see earlier entry for the step by step process) and thanks again to Grandma Jean for the recipe. (here’s the prebake and postbake photos)

It’s Easter Weekend, and that means a big celebration in our family. We actually started getting ready for Easter yesterday (Friday, April 14) when we 1) made the batter for butter horn rolls (which rises overnight in the fridge, and which we also use to make hot crossed buns), 2) boiled eggs to dye, and started the leg of lamb marinating.

Butter horn rolls:

This is our Grandma Jean’s recipe and since we were just in Iowa visiting her (and sampled hers), we thought we should definitely try to make some for Easter.  The dough is a sweet yeast dough (with eggs) so on Friday we made the batter:

On Saturday, after the dough had doubled in size, we kneaded the dough slightly, rolled it out and shaped it into either rolls or buns.  For the rolls we made triangles and rolled them up.  For the hot cross buns, we added raisins and made little balls of dough.  Then we let the rolls/buns rise for an hour and baked them.

Finally, after they baked and cooled, we frosted some of them with a little powdered sugar, OJ glaze…yum!

Hard Boiled Eggs

OK so this is pretty self-explanatory.  Hard boil a dozen white eggs; let cool, and decorate.

 Leg of Lamb Marinade

For the marinade for the lamb, on Friday night we combined red wine, chopped garlic, chopped rosemary, lemon juice and, of course the leg of lamb.  We let it marinade overnight Friday and then flipped it Saturday morning.

OK so we are all set for Easter: hot cross buns, Easter eggs and leg of lamb!

For Sunday’s dinner we made Beef Stir Fry and Pie! Read on for details about dinner.   cooking, see the next post. Happy Cooking!

         AND    

This was a yummy meal! Max was in charge of dinner and Alex was in charge of dessert.  We are going to talk about dessert first because it was actually made before dinner.  (Max had soccer practice so decided to make a quick stir fry (see below for dinner)

Today Max was in charge of dinner so I (Alex) made a lemon meringue pie for dessert.  Neither my mom or I had ever made it so we had to just choose a recipe and follow it.   It turned out really well but I would make a few tweaks (see below).

First I pre-baked a pie shell.  Then I separated 3 eggs and mixed the yolks with lemon juice, corn starch, sugar and a little butter.  I let that cook on the stove top till it was thick and then poured it into the pie shells. Then I whipped 3 egg whites (the ones I had used the yolks from before) with salt and sugar.  The only problem was that the recipe called for 1/4 teaspoon salt, which turned out to be way too much so I separated another egg, whipped that egg white, and folded it into the other 3 egg whites.  It helped a lot but next time I am just going to use a pinch of salt.  Also, I am glad I whipped 4 egg whites because I barely had enough meringue to cover the pie. If I had only had a 3-egg white meringue it wouldn’t have turned out nearly as well.  Anyway, after I whipped the eggwhites to stiff glossy peaks, I spread them on top of the lemon mix in the pie shell.  Then I baked it for 5 minutes.  (The recipe called for 10 minutes but the meringues were already golden brown, so that’s another place I would tweak the recipe.)

Because I knew I only had a short amount of time to cook dinner, I decided to make a beef, broccoli, red onion and kale stir fry.  The key ingredients to a stir fry in my opinion are chopped garlic, chopped ginger and a little sesame seed oil.  You start off cooking that to season the oil in the wok, then remove the garlic and the ginger so they don’t get burnt.  I also use a little soy sauce but soy often overpowers the taste of everything else, so I don’t use too much.  Also the key thing about stir fry is to chop everything up ahead of time.

Here’s the kale, garlic, ginger and red onion.

I also steamed the broccoli a little before I stir-fried it, because sometimes it takes too long to cook

Here’s the rest of the ingredients and the final product, served with rice.  I had to cook some of the ingredients separately because I ran out of the room in the wok.