Cooking For Kids - Breaded Chicken Fingers

By Christine Szalay Kudra

Kids can be notoriously hard to cook for and the fact that one week's favorite can turn into something hateful the next does not make life easier. There are a few recipes however, which will always appeal to kids. Breaded chicken fingers are easy to make and kids tend to love these. They might even forgive you for serving some broccoli or carrots on the side, as long as they have some hot and delicious chicken fingers and something to dip them into.

Boneless chicken is ideal for making these tasty dippers. Perhaps you have made a recipe for chicken parmesan or some grilled chicken recipes with boneless chicken, in which case you will already know how easy this economical ingredient is to work with and how versatile it is. You can buy chicken fingers readymade and frozen, of course, so you might be wondering why you would want to learn how to make chicken fingers but homemade chicken recipes always taste better than readymade ones, which is a great reason to make your own.

How to Serve Chicken Dippers

Serve breaded chicken fingers with ketchup, mayonnaise, salsa, or any dip you like. A sweet and sour dip is another good choice and barbecue sauce is great for dipping chicken fingers into. Serve some French fries or mashed potatoes on the side, as well as one or two vegetables. Chicken dippers should be drained on paper towels before you serve them, to soak up most of the grease, and then they are nice served hot. They can be eaten with the fingers or with cutlery.

Recipe for Chicken Fingers

In the following recipe, the chicken is marinated in a garlic, egg, and buttermilk mixture before being coated in the breadcrumbs. This tenderizes the chicken and gives it a wonderful texture and taste. This recipe serves six people or makes enough for ten kids to snack on. This is a great recipe to make if your kids have friends coming over.

You will need:

• 1 beaten egg
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 quart oil, for frying
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 6 chicken breast halves, no bones, or skin
• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder

How to make it:

Cut the chicken breast halves into half inch strips and put them in a big Ziploc bag. Combine the garlic powder, buttermilk, and egg and pour this mixture into the bag with the chicken. Leave it in the refrigerator for three hours to marinate. Combine the breadcrumbs, flour, baking powder, and salt in another bag. Take the chicken out of the first bag and drain it. Throw away the marinade.

Add the chicken to the bag with the breadcrumbs in and shake it well. Heat the oil to 375 degrees F in a skillet, and then fry the chicken in the oil until the juices run clear and the breadcrumb coating is golden brown.

Drain on paper towels and serve with your preferred dipping sauce.

There are grilled chicken recipes for adults and kids but if you want to thrill your kids, using your boneless chicken to make breaded chicken dippers is something they will love. Another time you might like to try an easy recipe for chicken parmesan.

BonelessChickenRecipe.com - Chicken so delightfully moist, you can almost smell it through your monitor.

Four Recipes For Kids Lunch Boxes

By Maggie Rahn 
Finding recipes for kids lunch boxes can be tricky. Most parents just reheat last night's dinner left overs and send their kids on their way. Lunch is a pretty important meal during a child's day, though, so if you have more time to think about and make what your kids will be taking to lunch at school, put in the extra effort. Making sure your kids are eating right in the middle of the day will definitely pay off in the future! Here are four recipes for kids lunch boxes:

· Tortilla Wrap

This is easy to do, and you can still use the leftovers! Wrap some meat and vegetables in a tortilla. You can add salsa, cheese, and/or sour cream if you like. Brown rice and beans are good additions too! Roll it up and put it in a sandwich bag or you can wrap it up in foil so it's easy to hold. It's a no fuss recipe that most kids will love, and it covers four of the five major food groups. Plus, you're sure it'll be healthier than anything your child can but at the school cafeteria!

· Chicken Salad Sandwich

Put some chopped chicken, lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumber between slices of whole wheat bread. You can add cheese or salad dressing to this sandwich to make it yummier and more appealing. Remember that you don't have to use chicken. You can substitute chicken for tuna, sliced beef, or sliced turkey. Almost any member of the protein group will go well with this sandwich, and so you can actually mix it up and have a different one everyday!

· Meatball Sub

Grab a mini baguette and line it with mustard (if your kid likes mustard), mayonnaise, cheese, tomatoes, and pickles. Put in some meatballs cooked in tomato sauce (you can use the leftovers from the spaghetti and meatballs you served the other night), and top it off with some sour cream. Wrap this well in a sandwich wrapper or foil, and your kid is ready to go!

· Croquettes

This recipe takes a bit more time to prepare. You can do the prep for it the night before, and just do the frying on the morning you're going to pack it. While frying isn't the healthiest form of cooking because of the excessive oil, croquettes are easy finger foods for kids. You can shape them into ping pong balls to make them easier to eat. Stuff them with mashed potatoes, tuna, turkey, or other healthy proteins. You can also just stuff them with bechamel and cheese, and your kids are in for a tasty treat!

Always try to put in a juice box and fruit cup into the lunch box apart from the above suggestions. Yogurt and granola bars can also work as a sweet snack. Ask your children what "extras" they'd like in their lunch boxes and keep them healthy!

Wish you could find more healthy recipe ideas for your kids? Need an easy way to feed your kids healthy foods? There is a place with your answers! Check out healthy recipes for kids and begin trying these quick and easy kid friendly, healthy recipes now!

Easy Recipes For Kids to Follow

By Aldric Chang

 Irrespective of their age or gender, kids love experimenting at the kitchen and easy recipes for kids to follow are therefore given so that your kid can spend time fruitfully. When you teach your kid these recipes you would observe that their basic skills in math, communication, reading and comprehension are also getting developed. Your kid would also learn to carefully follow the instructions provided which is really the preliminary lesson taught in primary schools. In addition to knowing the easy recipes for kids to follow you also need to get certain kitchen items handy for your kids like plastic/metal mixing bowls, wooden spoons, hot pads, cups, and apron.

The 2 easy recipes for kids to follow which would be discussed over here are "Krazy Kake", and "Mouse Cupcakes".

For preparing the dish of "Krazy Kake", you would require 2 teaspoonfuls of baking soda, 1 teaspoonful of common salt, 2 teaspoonfuls of vinegar, and 1 teaspoonful of vanilla. You would also require 2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of flour, 1/2 cup of cocoa, 3/4 cup of oil and 2 cups of water. Before putting anything, preheat the oven to a temperature of 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix all the dry ingredients in a baking pan. Make the ingredients smooth. With the aid of a spoon, you need to make 3 big holes in a dry mixture. Pour vanilla in one of the holes, in another one pour vinegar, and then oil in the 3rd hole. Pour water over the total mixture and stir with the help of a fork until the mixture becomes uniform. Bake this at the same pre-set temperature for approximately 40 minutes. Then take out the cake and allow it to cool. You can use powdered sugar as a topping for this cake. Ensure that your kid has understood the quantities of ingredients required and the process of preparation, which is quite simple.

The second preparation that is going to be discussed in easy recipes for kids to follow is "Mouse Cupcakes". The ingredients required would be 1 chocolate-cake mix, 8 scoops of vanilla ice-cream, small candies, skittles and licorice. The quantity of ingredients taken would be sufficient for preparation of 8 cupcakes.

First make the mixture for the cake preparation. Keep the muffin cups two-thirds full. Then make the preparation and allow it to cool after baking has been completed. When the cakes become cool, put ice-cream as a topping on them, and decorate them in a manner which gives a mouse's appearance. You can use 2 mint-cookies to make the ears of the mouse and candies to resemble the eyes and the nose. Cut the licorice and insert it appropriately for the whiskers of the mouse. If the cake has started to melt in between all this, place the cupcakes in the freezer for half an hour. This recipe is extremely easy to prepare and your kid would also use his creativity in giving the appearance of the mouse to the cake.

These easy recipes for kids to follow would help your kid to learn a lot about the cooking nuances and also improve his observation and improvisation skills.

Aldric Chang is a creative entrepreneur who is at the moment building kids games and free hidden object games. He runs an animation studio and his creative accomplishments span across the production of several hundred animation projects, casual games, music compositions, cartoon animated series and a virtual world for kids.

Easy Pasta Recipes For Kids

By Cyndi Wagner

If you're trying to encourage your kids to learn to cook, then you might consider some easy recipes for pasta. Most kids quite like pasta, and if they can make something gooey with lots of cheese, or make something with lots of slippery sliding pasta shapes, they might eventually notice that they like other things about pasta dishes as well.

There are lots of places to find easy pasta recipes that kids can make. For example, at Get-Kids-Cooking.com there is a recipe that takes very little time, but which gives parents an opportunity to teach kids how to cook spaghetti.

While seven ounces of spaghetti is cooking for ten minutes, the kids help chop six ripe tomatoes, and will no doubt enjoy giving two cloves of garlic a good crush. The tomatoes and garlic, three tablespoons of olive oil and two ounces of carefully grated Parmesan cheese can go into a bowl, and the cooked spaghetti can be stirred into it, along with fresh chopped basil. It's very simple, but introduces kids to some good tastes.
Easy recipes for kids to make can sometimes be found on larger recipe websites like AllRecipes.com or Epicurious.com, but most of those are geared toward adults. You may have to look harder for pasta dishes aimed toward the kids themselves as the cooks, but there are some entertaining and fun ideas out there. If they prepare the pasta themselves, then the kids may eventually become interested in cooking more elaborate, "grown-up" dishes.

You can get elaborate for your own pasta meals, with complex sauces and ingredients, but for getting kids involved in cooking, there's nothing like a few simple and fun to make pasta recipes.

Nothing beats the taste of fresh pasta made right in your own home. And surprisingly, it's not difficult at all to make. Click here to learn how a pasta roller machine such as the Imperia pasta maker can make it easy for you.

Kids Cookery - Recipes With Kids in Mind

By M Newbold

These days it can be a real challenge to get your children to focus their attention on learning some basic cooking skills that will stand them in good stead for life when they eventually leave home.
When my mother taught me to cook as a child, there were no computers, game consoles, or hundreds of TV channels to tempt me attention away from the kitchen. In fact it was expected of me to help prepare the family evening meal, and at weekends you would always find me peeling potatoes or slicing string beans for the Sunday Roast Dinner.

Even the preparation of the weekly family fruit cake eventually fell to me. I did not mind helping with the cooking, and I actually quite enjoyed it. Little did I know that my mother was slowly teaching me the basic skills I needed to become independent, and eventually provide for my own family.

Nowadays I am sure that the Health and Safety Brigade would have a thing or two to say about my use of sharp knives at such a young age, but I never once cut myself, and I also learnt about handling hot pans and kettles correctly so that I never had a burn or scald either. You can call it good luck, or you can call it life skills.

But when I remember back, although I did my fair share of peeling and chopping of vegetables, it was the good old fashioned lure of creating sweet treats that got me into the kitchen in the first place. Treats such as jam tarts, currant biscuits, apple pie, flapjacks, and fruit cake were just too tempting to turn down, and the promise of being able to scrape out the mixing bowl and lick the spoon clean was my extra special reward. Children naturally have a sweet tooth, so getting them interested in producing some simple sweet treats can go along way in teaching them basic kitchen skills.

But it is not just cooking skills they will be absorbing while in the kitchen. If you think about it, cooking is quite scientific. You are mixing lots of different ingredients together, both we and dry, to produce something completely different, so there is basic chemistry involved.

Also, to get the desired result of a fruit cake, you will need to weigh and measure the correct amount of ingredients, and bake at the right temperature for a specific amount of time, which in itself requires basic mathematical skills.

Regardless of how technical you want to make it seem, cooking as a family is a very social activity, it helps nurture children, and strengthen the bond between you.

So think of cooking with children as teaching them good life skills, social cooperation, mathematics, and chemistry.

But at the end of it all you will still have lots of yummy treats to gobble up for tea!

And on this note, here is one of my favourite recipes to tempt your kids into the kitchen, they can help with the measuring, mixing and pouring:

Flapjack Crunch. These start out quite crunchy, but after a couple of days become wonderfully soft and sticky, if they last that long!
225g butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
225g soft brown sugar
460g rolled oats

Melt the butter and syrup in a saucepan over a low heat, or melt together in a microwavable bowl in the microwave.

Put the rolled oats and sugar into a mixing bowl, then stir in the melted butter and syrup with a wooden spoon, mixing until well combined.

Tip the mixture into a shallow baking tin and spread out and flatten with a spoon until even.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes at 180C, 350F, Gas mark 4 until golden brown.

Allow to cool for two minutes then cut into slices. Leave until completely cool before removing from the tin.

Keep in an airtight container or biscuit tin.

Ideal for lunch boxes!

If you enjoyed this recipe, come on over to http://www.cotswoldfamilylife.co.uk for more!
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Michelle, Joint Editor, Cotswold Family Life

Homemade Peanut Butter Granola Cereal

This homemade granola recipe with peanut butter is a Lynch family favorite!  We love it so much, when I make it, I always quadrupole the recipe and make two 8x13 pans at a time so that I don't have to make it daily.  Then I can put the rest away for another day.

 5 cups rolled oats
3/4 cups brown sugar
1/3 cup honey
1/3 cup peanut butter

other extras such as dried fruit, berries, or nuts

Place rolled oats in a 9x9in pan, and preheat oven to 375F and set aside.

In a small pot, mix brown sugar,  honey and peanut butter. Stir, as you bring to a light boil.

Pour peanut butter mixture over the rolled oats, and mix in thoroughly.

Place in oven and cook for 15 Minutes.

Remove, break up any large chunks, and stir in any extras such as dried fruit, berries or nuts.
(We throw in a 1/2 cup of raisins, and some dried apples, and today I added a few chocolate chips)

Store any leftovers in an air tight container.