Cooking with two: spinach and onion tarts

I've done quite a few toddler cooking posts before, with easy recipes that toddlers can pretty much make by themselves, but as D gets older he can obviously do more complex things (breaking an egg is like yesterday's news to him) but Iz is only just starting on her culinary journey... So I'm going to post recipes every now and again that are perfect for doing with a toddler and a baby - with some very simple tasks that the baby can do but also enough tasks to stop the toddler being bored - for everyone with 2 or more little ones, you can still cook with them :)

So here is the first offering...

Spinach and onion tarts

Ingredients:

Ready made puff pastry

Spinach leaves

Cheddar cheese 

Red onion

Prep work*: 

- un-chill puff pastry

- chop up onion

- cook spinach (I microwaved it)

- grate cheddar

- grease baking tray

*you can do these stages with or without your toddler helping - D loves being involved with everything so shouts "Me help you! Me help you!" whenever I wander into the kitchen!

 

Next steps:

1. Assemble baby and toddler near the work surface (make sure anything you don't want them to touch is waaaay out of reach as these little people have *super* long reaches!)

2. Cut shapes out of puff pastry (Iz tried but needed help with this, D could do it fine on his own)

3. Sprinkle each with a layer of cheese, a few pieces of onion and some cooked spinach (Iz could do all this, but may have also sampled a fair bit too! Lol)

4. Top with another layer of cheese and transfer to a baking tray (as you can see, Iz may have picked up her sampling tendencies by watching someone else...)

5. Add an uncooked spinach leaf to the top of each tart (D banned Iz from helping after she started stealing the toppings and he finished them off himself. Gotta love toddlers!)

6. Cook at approx 160 degrees fan for 10 minutes (until cheese all melted and pastry lightly golden brown)

D also made a few teddy shapes and added some star sprinkles as their eyes and buttons. We cooked those with the tarts and he ate them for pudding.

Food is always more yummy when you make it yourself :)

These tarts were really delicious - the onion was soft and sweet after being cooked and the iron-y aftertaste you sometimes get with spinach was non-existent due to the cheese. I loved that D happily ate these but if I'd given him a pile of spinach or cooked onion I doubt he would've looked twice at them!

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We had lots of fun for our first time cooking with both of them and I'm really happy that Iz is happy helping in the kitchen already. D started cooking at 16 months so Iz has beaten him by a clear 7 months :) this recipe was quite simple for D but it meant that he basically took charge and did nearly all of it himself (after I'd chopped up the onion and spinach) - I was only called in to referee when he felt Iz was eating too much!

Have you done any cooking with young ones or with two together? I'll be trying out other simple recipes over the next few months and would love to hear any different ideas that we might not have tried.