Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Summer Activities with the Kids: Make Donuts!

by 2 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

Looking for some fun activities to do with your kids this summer? I’ve enjoyed 22 summers with kids (and counting!), so I certainly have a few ideas to share! Stay tuned during the next few weeks as we provide all kinds of suggestions for making your summer with your kids meaningful. (Subscribe here so you won’t miss out!) Today’s idea: Make Donuts. Who can say no to that?

Here’s what’s great about making donuts with your kids (besides the fact that everyone gets to eat donuts!):

This activity gives you a chance to help your kids learn more about reading a recipe, measuring ingredients, rolling, cutting, and kitchen safety. Our favorite recipes are listed below!

Looking for more help as you pull your kids into the kitchen with you?

And if you really want to go all in and teach your kids to cook this summer, I encourage you to invest in Katie Kimball’s Kids Cook Real Food eCourse. I used this course with Malachi and plan to use it with Bonus Boy too. It is FANTASTIC!!! Get the details here.

Make Donuts ~ Read a Book

Summer is an awesome time to spend more time reading fun books with your kids!

Have you read Homer Price? It’s a great read-aloud for your family! There’s a great chapter in the book about Homer making donuts with his uncle’s donut machine – SUCH a fun chapter! The donuts got out of control!! After you read that chapter, you’ll have no choice but to get into the kitchen and make donuts with your kids!

Here are a couple pictures of my four oldest boys enjoying the donuts we made after reading Homer Price many years ago. Aw, they were so little! (And Malachi was apparently playing dress-up too!)

chocolatedonuts3sm.JPG

chocolatedonuts5sm.JPG

He’s 14 now. But he still loves donuts.

Ready for some Donut Recipes? Here’s a classic favorite of ours!

Summer Activity with the Kids: Make Donuts

Whole Grain Cake Donuts
 
Save Print
Author:
Serves: 15-20
Ingredients
  • 3 ¼ cup whole grain flour
  • 2 teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
  • ⅔ cup sucanat or brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • ⅔ cup milk
  • ¼ cup melted butter
  • Oil for frying (I use palm shortening or coconut oil)
Instructions
  1. Mix dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
  2. Stir in eggs, vanilla, milk and melted butter.
  3. On a floured surface, roll dough to ½ inch thickness.
  4. Cut with donut cutter, biscuit cutter, or cookie cutters.
  5. Heat oil in skillet or electric skillet (enough oil to cover the bottom of the skillet about ¼ inch).
  6. Place donuts into the hot oil to fry for 2-3 minutes on each side.
  7. Remove from skillet and place on a paper towel lined plate.
  8. Sprinkle a mixture of sugar and cinnamon, or powdered sugar over the hot donuts.

 

Want to make your donuts even healthier? How about adding a veggie – without anyone noticing? Whole Grain Pumpkin Donuts for the win! Truly, when you add pumpkin puree to donuts it not only adds nourishment but adds moisture and delicious flavor too! Find the recipe here:

Whole Grain Pumpkin Donuts

Need a little frosting for your donuts?

Here’s a high-sugar chocolate recipe. I will provide this recipe for you, but I will not be held responsible for giving your kids a sugar high. ;)

Simple Fudge Frosting

2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
¼ cup cocoa
¼ cup butter
¼ cup water
½ t. vanilla

Stir powdered sugar and cocoa together in a bowl. In a small saucepan, melt butter. Add water and bring to a boil. Pour boiling water and butter into powdered sugar and cocoa. Add vanilla. Beat with hand mixer until frosting is combined.

How about a donut glaze that is much lower in sugar!

Orange Honey Glaze

2 teaspoons orange juice concentrate
1/4 cup heavy cream
2 Tablespoons honey

Whisk ingredients together on the stove until smooth. Drizzle over warm donuts!

Get out the Cookie Cutters!

Regular circle donuts and donut holes are fine. But we can make donuts even more fun when we use cookie cutters to make them into fun shapes! Any cookie cutters will do. Make stars during the Fourth of July. Make animal shapes after a visit to the zoo. Make hearts and deliver them to someone you love. Oh the fun you can have!

You might also consider baking your donuts in a cool silicone donut making mold.

Share with Others

Did you see the sentence above about using a heart-shaped cookie cutter to make heart-shaped donuts to share with someone you love?

One of the best ways to spend time with your kids this summer is to SERVE others with them. Perhaps one way you can serve together is to make donuts and deliver them to someone who could use the blessing of friendship and fellowship!

Ready to have some summer fun with your kids? Head into the kitchen and make donuts! Take pictures and let us know how it goes!

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

How My Kids Adapted a Recipe to Make it Healthier, a Brownie Pudding Cake Recipe, and a “Teaching Your Kids to Cook” eBook Giveaway!

by 216 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

While I do the majority of the cooking at our house, simply because I love it so much, we have slowly but surely been training our boys to read recipes and put simple meals together. Remember how they cooked for me on Mother’s Day? Dad played a big role in that, but still, it was impressive to me (as I sat locked in my office listening and blogging the play-by-play of the action) to hear that our boys know where ingredients are, and how to figure out a brand new recipe.

Most impressive to me, however, is the fact that our boys have learned to adapt recipes to make them healthier. I really had no idea that I was inadvertently teaching them this skill as we’ve cooked together. But as our two middle boys (ages 10 and 12) dug through our Better Homes and Gardens cookbook one day recently and decided to make a Brownie Pudding Cake, I found myself preparing to walk them through how to exchange less healthy ingredients for those that we typically bake with.

To my surprise, my assistance was never needed. I heard them reading the recipe aloud, “1/4 cup sugar – okay, I’ll get out the sucanat.” and  “1 Tablespoon cooking oil…I think coconut oil would be the best one for this cake.”

I stayed out of the kitchen the entire time. They had it under control and knew just what to do. Might they still need my assistance at times while they are cooking? Of course. Not everything about “healthifying” a recipe is as easy as switching out sugar for sucanat, one for one. But it goes to show that if you talk through recipes while you’re cooking with your kids, they will learn an incredible amount, whether you realize it or not!

In case you’re interested, here is my boys’ version of a very tasty cake. They even got a picture…after we taste tested it. :)

Coppinger Boys’ Brownie Pudding CakeYum

1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup sucanat
1 Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup milk
1 Tablespoon melted coconut oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup sucanat
2 Tablespoons cocoa powder
3/4 cup boiling water

Stir together flour, 1/4 cup sucanat, 1 Tablespoon cocoa, and the baking powder. Add milk, oil and vanilla, stirring until smooth. Spread batter in a 1-quart baking dish. Combine 1/3 cup sucanat, and the remaining 2 Tablespoons of cocoa powder. Gradually stir in boiling water. Pour evenly over batter. Bake at 350° for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Serve warm. Makes 6 servings.

I’ve created a free downloadable Healthy Recipe Substitutions Chart
that you are welcome to print and keep in your kitchen.
Here is more information I’ve written on substituting healthy ingredients.

And now for the giveaway!

I’ve found that summer is a perfect time to give my kids more time and experience in the kitchen. Interested in joining me in this endeavor? (With your own kids, of course. My kids would probably love to come cook in your kitchen, but they’ll be too busy scrambling eggs and making muffins in mine. Sorry.)

Last summer, we finished and launched to new books:  Teaching Your Kids to Cook (written for the parent) and Learn to Cook (written for the student). We’re giving away one of each today (the downloadable version) as a way to encourage you to get your kids in the kitchen with you. And watch closely over the next few days. There may or may not be a sale on those books soon. :)

If you’re interested in winning one of these books, head over to the book description page and look them over. Come back here and leave a comment, letting us know which one would work best for your family. If you’d like extra entries for more chances to win, share this giveaway on Facebook, like me on Facebook, follow me on Pinterest, subscribe to my blog, and/or come mop my floors. I’d be happy to give you extra entries for any or all of the above. ;)

I’ll draw two random winners on Monday, May 28. Please watch for a post stating the winners as you will be responsible for contacting me if your name is chosen.

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!

Teaching Your Kids to Cook and Learn to Cook Books

by 17 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links. For more information, please see our disclosure policy.

We are excited to announce that our new books, Teaching Your Kids to Cook and Learn to Cook, are now ready for purchase! We are offering these books as a download (pdf file), so you can purchase and receive a download link directly in your email inbox. In addition, we are offering you a chance to purchase both Teaching Your Kids to Cook and Learn to Cook in a package, offering you a hefty discount!

Teaching Your Kids to Cook – For Parents of Kids Ages 2-12

Teaching Your Kids to Cook is written for parents who desire to spend time helping their children learn their way around the kitchen. Filled with instructions, tips, activities, printables and over 45 simple, kid friendly recipes – you and your kids will have many opportunities to make messes together and get chocolate in your hair. Here’s hoping your kids learn how to put basic meals and treats together and learn to serve others too!

The recipes in this book include only wholesome, easy to attain ingredients. Teaching Your Kids to Cook is perfect for families with young children – oh the memories you will make!

Help yourself to free sample pages of Teaching Your Kids to Cook.

Learn to Cook – Because You Gotta Eat

Learn to Cook is written to anyone old enough to use a stove (I’d say ages 8 and up). Not only for kids, this book may also be helpful for adults who are new to cooking. This book can be handed directly to “the student” and while you should certainly be available to guide them along as they learn new kitchen skills, your sons and daughters, newlyweds and cooking novices can read Learn to Cook on their own and take off with all of the new skills they are learning! From measuring to menu planning to grocery budgeting – this book covers all the kitchen basics. Not to mention, it includes over 55 simple to prepare recipes!

The recipes in this book include only wholesome, easy to attain ingredients. Learn to Cook will equip the reader with basic kitchen knowledge – an incredibly important life skill!

Help yourself to free sample pages of Learn to Cook.

[wp_eStore_fancy1 id=17]

The Package Deal

Depending on the ages of your kids or the needs of your family, you may be interested in owning both of these books! We’ve combined them into packages and chunked off a nice piece of the price, as several of the recipes and printables in the books are duplicated.

[wp_eStore_fancy1 id=8]

Heavenly Homemaker's Club Members: Access your homepage and all your fantastic resources here! Not a member yet? Please join us!