Valentine’s Day is a day for treats as well as expressions of love.Chocolates are always nice, but kids love to add a little fun to the mix.
VALENTINE'S DAY COOKIE IDEAS
For a really special day, send your kids to school with a fresh batch of Valentine's cookies. Always check on school policy first to see if they are allowed and if your child's school is a peanut free environment, be sure the cookies are peanut free too.
For kids, baking is fun. It is a way for them to help out in the kitchen and learn love cooking, and it can be some nice quality time with Mom or Dad.
If you don't have much time, the freezer section of the grocery store has several flavors of cookies.
I generally don't like to buy them because they have no nutrition or fiber. But for a special Valentine's treat, rules can be bent, especially if they are for sharing.
Rolled dough is good to use and eliminates cleanup hassles after the cookies are made.
Take a roll of refrigerated dough and roll it out on a non-stick surface. Add a touch of flour to the rolling pin before you try to roll the dough or it will stick. Younger kids may find it easier to roll the dough out with a plastic rolling pin because they are not as heavy as the wooden ones.
TURN YOUR OWN HEALTHY RECIPE INTO A VALENTINE'S DAY COOKIE TREAT
Heart shaped cookie cutters will turn regular sugar, peanut butter, and chocolate chip cookies into creations of love. Kids don’t only like hearts. Let them experiment with other shapes in the cookie cutter arsenal if they want to. They can even design shapes of their own with the dough pieces that are too small to cut.
Red and white sprinkles or candy hearts are excellent cookie decorators.
SAY IT WITH CUPCAKES
Cupcakes are much the same but it takes a bit more preparation.
Again, if you're short on time you can use a box cake mix instead of mixing everything from scratch.
But it isn't really that hard to whip up a healthy version with some QK Healthy Flour Mix.
Remind your kids that if you are adding egg that they can’t dip a finger in because of the possibility of salmonella poisoning. You will probably get a few boos, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
The kids can choose to use cupcake cups that are decorated for the holiday or spoon them directly into the muffin pan. Mini muffin pans create bite size cupcakes for the family to enjoy after dinner. If you have a window in the oven, kids will camp out and watch the cupcakes bake just like a television show.
Decorate those cupcakes with creamy icing. White icing can be turned into pink with a bit of red food coloring. Kids will be amazed by this as the white icing changes colors. For an extra special touch, add candy sprinkles or cinnamon red hot candies. It will be hard to keep the kids from eating up all the ingredients as they bake. It may be hard to keep you from sneaking that spoonful of icing when you should be adding it to the cupcakes too so be warned.
Valentine's Day can be one more day that you can take advantage of to spread a little love around the family kitchen and give your kid's some fun memories that they will always remember… especially if you make baking Valentine's Cookies and Cupcakes a tradition.
