Season 1, Episode 4: baking with kids

Transcript

Conner: (00:00)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast hosted by my mom.

Stephanie: (00:16)
Today, I want you to meet Wendy McGowan. She's a professional baker and cake and cookie decorator who learned the craft from her grandmother.

Wendy McGowan: (00:25)
After I'd had my first son, I realized that she was getting older and that nobody had learned to decorate cakes, and I thought that that would be a really fun thing I could do as a stay-at-home mom and develop that talent. I asked her if she would teach me how, and of course, she was like, "Yes, yes, yes."

Wendy McGowan: (00:45)
She was 83 and, at the time, legally blind, but she could decorate a perfect cake. She taught me all about icing consistency and buttercream versus royal icing and we went over how to bake cakes and decorate them, and then she could still pipe a perfect buttercream rose. She'd have me pipe one and then she'd stick it really close to her. I thought she'd get buttercream in her eyelashes cause she'd get it so close to her eyes so she could look at it and then she'd go, "No, that's not good enough. Do it again. Go home and practice."

Stephanie: (01:19)
During Wendy's culinary career, she has owned a bakery in Florida and competed on a team with her friend and boss at the time on the first episode of the Food Network's Cake Wars. Today, she teaches both adults and kids how to decorate cookies and cakes in Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. Just in time for holiday baking, she is sharing her tips to make baking with our kids a bit more enjoyable.

Stephanie: (01:47)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast about helping busy adults find the inspiration and information they need to teach the kids in their lives how to cook. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, and I'm excited because today, we're going to talk about holiday baking, which is one of my favorite holiday traditions. I have fond memories of baking with my mom at the holidays, and it's something I love sharing with my son, too.

Stephanie: (02:20)
Wendy and I had a fun time talking about all things sugar. What I was most interested in, though, was her thoughts on this question: How can we, as parents, have more fun and a more successful baking experience with our kids?

Wendy McGowan: (02:38)
My idea of a successful cookie decorating adventure is to plan ahead. The first thing in preparation that I do is I read the recipe, pick a recipe that you like, maybe one that someone's given you or maybe you've tried it a bunch of different times.

Wendy McGowan: (02:57)
The important thing is to check to make sure whether it needs to chill overnight or not. Most cookie, especially sugar cookie recipes, ask you to chill it at least overnight, and that is important. I have tried to ignore that advice before making my own cookies thinking, "Oh, it's no big deal," and cut out different cookies, Santa Claus, and after you cook it, it doesn't at all look like a Santa Claus anymore. Good advice to follow is to always read the recipe and see what it says.

Wendy McGowan: (03:29)
If you have kids that want to help with the actual mixing and making the cookies, then you're going to want to find a recipe that you don't have to chill overnight. There are some good ones out there that you don't need to.

Stephanie: (03:44)
I like that, because I have been burned by that.

Wendy McGowan: (03:46)
Yes. Then you go, "Wait." Then the kids are like, "No, I want to decorate cookies, let's do it."

Stephanie: (03:50)
Then they're sad.

Wendy McGowan: (03:51)
Yup.

Stephanie: (03:51)
They're very, very sad.

Wendy McGowan: (03:52)
Very sad.

Stephanie: (03:54)
Yes.

Wendy McGowan: (03:54)
Plan ahead, or tell the kids beforehand, "We're going to make the cookies tonight and we'll bake them tomorrow and we'll decorate them," so that they are aware of what to expect. That's the number one because they always stick that down at the bottom of the recipe.

Stephanie: (04:11)
Yeah, they do.

Wendy McGowan: (04:12)
They should put it up at the top in bold letters.

Wendy McGowan: (04:17)
The next one is that you want to also choose cookies that your kids can successfully decorate. If you want Santa cookies, that might be amazing, but to decorate a Santa cookie with all the different colors that come with him, if you don't want to make that much frosting in that many colors and your kids aren't ready to do that sort of thing, then you might want to choose something more like a Santa hat or different cookies that maybe only take three colors: a Santa hat, a holly leaf, something that only uses the red, white, and green to make life simpler.

Wendy McGowan: (04:53)
I know a lot of kids come into my classes and they see big bags of frosting and cupcakes or cookies, and their goal is to get as much frosting on that cupcake or cookie as they possibly can because it sounds delicious. If that's not what you're going for, then they should know that ahead of time so that you're not going, "No," and then you get upset with them and then it becomes a fight because they really want that on there.

Wendy McGowan: (05:20)
Before even making the cookies, one way you could do that is to say, "All right, we're going to make all of these cookies. Who should we give them to?" Set some aside for yourselves. Okay, everybody gets to make one cookie that they can eat today and then a cookie to save for another day, and then a cookie for Grandma or a cookie for the neighbor so that they know who their audience is, who's going to look at those cookies. They may change how they decorate them based on who they're going to give them to, try a little harder, or just add as much frosting as possible for their own.

Wendy McGowan: (05:52)
Another idea is to make extra cookies so that the kids can have to make mistakes on. Working with sugar, there's going to be mistakes. It's an imperfect substance. It does what it wants sometimes, so always having something to practice on, give them cookies so that they can mess them up, and then they know they're not going to have to give them away. It releases some of the pressure that some kids can feel when they're decorating cookies.

Stephanie: (06:17)
What about other things that we maybe could do in advance?

Wendy McGowan: (06:22)
Making the frosting in advance, if your kids aren't interested, or you could make that the day ahead. If you want an overnight cookie recipe, make the cookie dough, put it in the fridge, and then make the frosting, and even maybe color the frosting. Then put it aside or fill it in your piping bags and wait for the next day, depending on how you want to store the frosting so the frosting is ready to go and the cookies are done. That can spread out your time and make it so that when you sit down to decorate the cookies, it doesn't take nearly as long.

Wendy McGowan: (06:55)
A lot of my students are surprised that we make royal icing to decorate cookies and it can take us an hour to make the icing, fill the piping bags and then start decorating and they're like, "Oh, I didn't realize it would take this much time," but it really does take a long time to prep all of that.

Stephanie: (07:12)
When we talk about frosting and storing that, how do we make sure that we don't mess that part up? Because some of us have made mistakes and let certain frostings be exposed to air, or I'm sure there's other things that you could screw up, but how do we make sure that, especially with the royal frosting? Maybe you could talk a little bit about what royal frosting is? How is that different than a buttercream, for example?

Wendy McGowan: (07:42)
Okay. A normal buttercream is like what we get at the grocery store or what come on cakes from grocery stores. That's normal. Most of the time, an American buttercream is made with butter, powdered sugar, and you get it light and fluffy and super yummy-looking.

Wendy McGowan: (07:59)
Royal icing is a icing that usually comes on sugar cookies. It hardens and it's really smooth and flows really well. You can decorate sugar cookies with buttercream if you prefer buttercream. Royal icing, the traditional way of doing it, is made with egg whites and powdered sugar. I like to use meringue powder. It's more safe.

Stephanie: (08:25)
Yes. Yes.

Wendy McGowan: (08:26)
It is.

Stephanie: (08:27)
And it's easier.

Wendy McGowan: (08:28)
And it's easier, yes. Some bakers will still use egg whites, but I wouldn't even mess with it. You use royal icing and powdered sugar and then some water. My grandma always taught me to-

Stephanie: (08:43)
Meringue powder, right?

Wendy McGowan: (08:44)
... Yeah, I'm sorry.

Stephanie: (08:44)
Yeah, meringue, yeah.

Wendy McGowan: (08:45)
Meringue powder, powdered sugar, and water. Sometimes, my grandma would add lemon juice just to give it a little bit of a different flavor, so you could add vanilla.

Stephanie: (08:54)
I think I saw Martha Stewart do that in a YouTube video.

Wendy McGowan: (08:57)
I think she got it from my grandma. Not really.

Stephanie: (09:01)
I love that. No, let's say that.

Wendy McGowan: (09:02)
Okay.

Stephanie: (09:02)
I'm going to go with that.

Wendy McGowan: (09:05)
After about a few minutes, it really doesn't take very long, meringue powder will get a crust on it, and once it gets that crust and dries out slightly, you can't really work it back into the rest of the icing. It stays crunchy. If you leave it out long enough, it goes hard, but it's still soft enough to eat.

Wendy McGowan: (09:24)
You want to really be careful when you work with royal icing that it's not exposed to air very much or that you keep it covered with a wet towel. You can make the royal icing and then put it immediately into a container that's airtight and try to get as much air out of it as you can. If you put it into piping bags that are airtight and seal them with a rubber band or something overnight, you can still use them the next day. You're just going to want to warm them up a little bit with your hands and it'll come back to the right consistency.

Stephanie: (09:53)
Do we need to put those in the refrigerator or are they okay to sit out?

Wendy McGowan: (09:55)
Royal icing is fine to sit out for a day or two. You can put them into the fridge if you are worried about that or if you would prefer. You just need to let them come back to room temperature before you work with them and knead them in your hands just to get the warm enough.

Stephanie: (10:11)
Are there any tricks? We have our frosting is made, we have it in the piping bags, we store it correctly. We have our different colors. We did the rubber band and we did all the things and then our cookie dough is ready to go. We're set up, hopefully, for some fun and success.

Wendy McGowan: (10:30)
Yes.

Stephanie: (10:31)
Now, the piping bags can be pretty tricky for all of us.

Wendy McGowan: (10:36)
Okay.

Stephanie: (10:37)
Okay, maybe just me.

Wendy McGowan: (10:39)
No, it's for all of you.

Stephanie: (10:40)
For kids. For kids, too.

Wendy McGowan: (10:42)
Once you've filled your piping bag, the correct way to hold a piping bag is to twist the top. Once you fill up the bottom, you squish it all down to the bottom of the bag where the tip is, and then you twist that. You can put a really tight rubber band on, if you'd like to. That can help sometimes prevent the icing coming back up the top.

Wendy McGowan: (11:00)
But then, also, I like to twist it and then I hold the piping bag where the rubber band is, or the top of the frosting, I guess I should say, right in the crook of your thumb and your finger. You want to focus on pressing to pipe with the palm of your hand, not with your fingers.

Wendy McGowan: (11:18)
A lot of kids and adults will press with their fingers and because your fingers are so small, the frosting just goes everywhere else other than where your fingers are, but the palm pressing down toward the piping tip will put pressure on the piping tip to come out that way.

Wendy McGowan: (11:34)
Frosting coming out the bottom where the tip is usually means that you've cut the hole where your tip goes a little too large, so just either try cutting a smaller one and then you can take the frosting that's in that bag and just squeeze it into another bag to fill that up once you've put another piping tip in there. You want to use a coupler if you can. That will hold the bag a little more secure, and then you'll be able to change the piping tips as you go.

Stephanie: (12:01)
For people who don't know, a coupler is what?

Wendy McGowan: (12:05)
A coupler, it's a white piece that has two parts. It has a large piece that you put down inside of the bag.

Stephanie: (12:12)
It's sort of a cone-shaped hole, right?

Wendy McGowan: (12:13)
Yeah, it's like a cone shape, yeah, and it has threads on it. You take the two pieces, the large one that goes down inside the bag, and then a twisty part on the outside that you take off. Then you can set your tip onto the coupler and then the twisty part goes over and twists the tip into place so that it doesn't move.

Wendy McGowan: (12:32)
That way, say you have green frosting and you want to pipe some vines on your cake or the green rind on a watermelon, if you're making a watermelon cookie or something like that, but then you also want to make leaves to go with flowers, you can take off that piping tip and on the leaf tip and then make leaves.

Stephanie: (12:52)
Okay. This is obviously for the more advanced group. Most of us are probably going to have like a star and just a circle.

Wendy McGowan: (13:04)
Well, good ones to know are, yeah, a star, a circle, and maybe a leaf, too, if you get there. No pressure.

Stephanie: (13:11)
No. Well, that's why we take classes and that's why we learn, right?

Wendy McGowan: (13:16)
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Stephanie: (13:17)
Wendy is a firm believer in kids helping with the cleanup, too. Hallelujah. But first, I want to understand this: How can we minimize the messes in the first place?

Wendy McGowan: (13:30)
When you're making frosting, to help not have such a mess, one of the best ways is to always start your mixer on low. I have accidentally turned mixers on high and ended up with a huge mess, so I know it happens.

Wendy McGowan: (13:44)
Sometimes when I'm mixing something with a lot of flour or I'm worried about the powdered sugar going everywhere, I take saran wrap and cover the whole mixer in saran wrap so that if the flour starts flinging places, then it just goes back into the bowl. I cover that area between the bowl and the mixer just to keep that contained.

Wendy McGowan: (14:06)
Bench scrapers are really good. You can have plastic ones or just a plastic piece. Sometimes I'll use stiff paper that I have around when I'm trying to clean up a mess and scrape off my counter so that you're not adding water to a bunch of flour to get it off, then you end up with glue. If you scrape off all of that flour, all of that powdered sugar first, and then go back with the wet cloth to clean up just the little what's left over.

Wendy McGowan: (14:33)
Royal icing will also stick to your counters if you're making cookies. The scraper, you can buy for a dollar at the dollar store, and you can just easily break off all of that and wipe it off before you're wiping off with a wet cloth.

Stephanie: (14:48)
Mess is part of it, right?

Wendy McGowan: (14:50)
Right.

Stephanie: (14:50)
We need to just get over that, but it stresses some of us out.

Wendy McGowan: (14:55)
Right. See, I think going back to the baking versus cooking, when I think, "Oh, cook a recipe," I go, "Oh, that's such a mess to clean up," but baking, I'm like, "Oh, this'll be fun." I don't even think about the mess to clean up.

Stephanie: (15:08)
Well, at the end of baking, you have cookies instead of chicken and broccoli.

Wendy McGowan: (15:14)
Exactly.

Stephanie: (15:15)
So, there's a difference there, too.

Stephanie: (15:17)
It was such a pleasure to talk with Wendy. My son and I took one of her decorating classes last Valentine's Day and we had a blast. Of course, Wendy did the setup and the cleanup, so that really helped a lot.

Stephanie: (15:31)
You can follow Wendy's work on Facebook and Instagram by searching for Sweet Cactus Cake Club and in the show notes on kiddosinthekitchen.com, I will link to a cookie recipe that Wendy recommends, and I'll share some links to the tool she recommends, too.

Stephanie: (15:47)
Now, it's time for Kitchen Questions where I ask my guests a few questions to better understand her kitchen. Naturally, I asked Wendy about baking and sweets, beginning with the obvious question: What is her favorite cookie?

Child: (16:01)
It's time for Kitchen Questions. I have a question: What would happen if you put a little bit of the wrong ingredient inside a cookie? Why are cupcakes squishy? How often do you burn things on accident? Do you like cake? What is the difference between baking and roasting? What is your favorite recipe?

Stephanie: (16:28)
What is your favorite cookie if you're going to bake?

Wendy McGowan: (16:30)
Chocolate chip.

Stephanie: (16:31)
Chocolate chip? Hard or soft?

Wendy McGowan: (16:33)
Soft.

Stephanie: (16:33)
Soft? Semi-sweet chocolate chips or dark?

Wendy McGowan: (16:39)
Milk.

Stephanie: (16:40)
Milk? I don't...

Wendy McGowan: (16:40)
Yeah. I think Guittard chocolate chips are the best chocolate chips. They're bigger.

Stephanie: (16:52)
I bet. Cupcakes versus layer cake?

Wendy McGowan: (16:57)
Layer cake for me.

Stephanie: (16:59)
Royal icing versus buttercream?

Wendy McGowan: (17:03)
It depends on what you're putting it on. Buttercream. I would choose buttercream except for cookies.

Stephanie: (17:10)
That's just because they stick?

Wendy McGowan: (17:13)
Just because of the look, yeah. You can't really get quite the same look with buttercream on cookies as you can with royal icing.

Stephanie: (17:18)
Chocolate versus vanilla?

Wendy McGowan: (17:20)
Chocolate.

Stephanie: (17:21)
Hand versus stand mixer?

Wendy McGowan: (17:26)
Stand mixer all the way.

Stephanie: (17:37)
My next guest is Malina Malkani. You heard her on episode 2 when she shared her thoughts on how we can help our kids develop a healthier relationship with food. She's a registered dietician, nutritionist and a spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Stephanie: (17:57)
She is also an expert on picky eating, a common challenge we parents face, so I asked her specifically about fruit. What are some good first fruits to introduce young children to, and how can we encourage kids to try new ones?

Malina Malkani: (18:22)
The way that we prepare fruits can often determine whether they're intimidating or not. For some children, when they're school age, if you just hand them an apple, it can be a little bit daunting to think, especially if they don't have front teeth.

Stephanie: (18:37)
I know. "How do I break into this?"

Malina Malkani: (18:40)
To be mindful of how it comes across, sometimes even just slicing it up into thin slices or even just chunks can be a really much more approachable way to serve fruit.

Malina Malkani: (18:55)
Avocado tends to be a great first fruit to offer because first of all, it's very nutrient-dense. It's high in monounsaturated fats and it has a very mild flavor, so for children who are just starting to experience flavors, it's not that overwhelming and the texture is very soft, so it's easy for them to mush it in their mouths without any issues.

Malina Malkani: (19:21)
I always do like to remind parents, too, especially if there is an element of anxiety or fear or pickiness around new foods, there's a couple of things you can do: Offering new foods along with old favorites also helps make those new foods seem a lot less intimidating, and that's for a few reasons. One is just that there's a power of positive association.

Malina Malkani: (19:45)
Offering new foods along with familiar foods can reduce the stress in a child that at that meal or snack where a new food is offered, they know that with that familiar food, they're not going to have to leave the table feeling hungry. They know there's something there that they can eat, so that allows the new food to be whatever kind of exposure it's going to be for that child in that moment, whether it's just letting it sit there on the plate or looking at it, smelling it, touching it, picking it up, licking it, whatever it is, it can be done without the stress of feeling like, "Oh, if I don't try this new food, I'm going to leave the table hungry."

Malina Malkani: (20:25)
Then a third way that's really fun and helpful to get kids more interested in new foods or unfamiliar foods is to make them fun and to prepare them in such a way that they are maybe kind of funny or fun. Fun and entertainment goes a long way with kids. We know this. We all know this as parents. The cuter and funnier and more entertaining something, they just like that. It just gets them interested. It gets them involved in the process.

Malina Malkani: (20:53)
One thing I do a lot at home is make cute little food faces. I mean, I'm no Pinterest mom, but on a plate, if you slice up some fruit and have a few different offerings and just arrange it into a fun face, it could be something fun that makes the entire experience more approachable for them.

Malina Malkani: (21:11)
It's funny now at this point, I've been doing that for a few years now and my youngest, who is six, makes her own food faces now on her plate. If I give her a plate and give her foods, she does the arranging herself and finds it very fun. Those are some tips that hopefully can help.

Stephanie: (21:27)
Thank you to Malina and Wendy for talking with me. You can find more information on both of these wonderful women on our website, kiddosinthekitchen.com.

Stephanie: (21:43)
Baking with my son has been an evolution, for sure. His decorating abilities have progressed, he's become interested in different kinds of cookies, and his attention span has grown. Though to be fair, he's always had a bit more focus for cookie baking than other activities, but it's something we both look forward to every year. Some years, his teenage cousin decorates with him. Grandma usually partakes in the fun, too. She is a godsend at helping me keep my kitchen from becoming a total disaster.

Stephanie: (22:18)
At the end of the day, we have more cookies than we can possibly eat, but it's never really been about the cookies. I mean, sure, I do love a peanut butter blossom cookie, those are the ones with the Hershey kiss on top, and you bet, we'll all eat more cookies than we should those last couple of weeks in December, but cookie baking, to me, is about a feeling. It's the smell of sugar in the kitchen. It's the fun of making a mess. It's time with family. I remember baking cookies with my mom and I'll never forget baking with my son. To me, cookie baking is home.

Stephanie: (23:10)
This month, I hope you find the time to let the flour fly. I hope you find the patience to let all types of sugar coat your countertops. I hope you find the time to smile over imperfections and Pinterest fails while your kiddos decorate green Santas and red snowflakes and blue Christmas trees. Let them play with icing and sprinkles. Let them eat cookies for breakfast and lick the frosting off the beaters. It is the holidays, after all, and we're doing the very thing our parents or our grandparents did for us when we were little. We're building traditions and we're creating memories. With that, from my heart to yours, I wish you a joyous, sweet holiday season.

Stephanie: (24:00)
Thanks for joining me for Kiddos in the Kitchen. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, with a reminder from my son.

Conner: (24:06)
If you like my mom's podcast as much as I do, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephanie: (24:26)
That's right, Conner. You can also view the show notes, subscribe to our newsletter, and check out all of our other content at kiddosinthekitchen.com. We're Kiddos Cook on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and I'll be back next month with another fresh episode. Until then, I encourage you to get your kiddos in the kitchen.