Four Kids Cooking

Hi everyone! We've been doing lots of cooking and baking, but we've also been doing lots of FILMING! Remember how I said to stay tuned for an exciting announcement? Well, my brother and sisters and I have started a cooking channel for kids on YouTube! Our channel is called @Fourkidscooking. We're putting out videos every Thursday and there are lots of fun projects for kids to do. And please show it to kids whom you know, because we're really excited to hear what other kids think of it and what kids want to see more of. We're @fourkidscooking on Instagram too, so that's another good place to see what we're doing. But I definitely love blogging and I want to keep up with it because it's a better way to share links to recipes and to talk about them more. So let's get on with some recipes!

Every year for Mardi Gras we have king cake. One of my dad's colleagues sent him one a few years ago and we loved it and turned it into a family tradition! King cake is actually more of a sweet bread than a cake. It is made with a yeast dough that gets braided and can have different fillings. The most important part is the baby. The baby is a tiny plastic baby figurine that you stick in the cake once it has been baked (to avoid melted plastic and chemicals in your food!) and it is supposed to bring luck for the year to whoever finds it in his or her serving! Some people make it so that the person who gets the baby has to make the cake or host the party next year, but I like thinking that it brings luck more! In the past we have bought our king cake, but this year we made our own Mardi Gras King Cake. This recipe actually makes two king cakes with two different fillings, a cinnamon sugar filling and a cream cheese filling. My big-little sister preferred the cream cheese filling. But both are actually really good!

I love the classic vibrant King Cake colors of the sanding sugar on top. Henry and Layssa got the babies!

This is the cream cheese filling.

And this is the cinnamon sugar. But you can't go wrong with either!

Another very popular special breakfast that we made was Maple Twist Coffee Cake. It was a labor intensive breakfast and it was extremely rich, but it tasted REALLY great. My big-little sister's review was that it was "super awesomely awesome" and that the dough and filling were perfectly balanced. You might remember that I've posted before about making Tarte Soleil, which is a spinach and feta tart that looks like a sun. Well, the process for making this is actually very similar.

You roll out two rounds of dough and layer a maple walnut filling between them.

You use a glass to stamp a circle in the center and then divide the surrounding dough into sections and twist them. It's fun once you get the hang of it!

This is what it looks like baked. The final touch is a maple icing.

And then you just pull off sections to serve it.

A slightly odd dish was Olive Oil Bundt Cake with Beet Swirl. I usually like olive oil cake, but I thought that this one needed to be sweeter. The beet flavor is a teensy bit weird, but it's mild and looks cool. The texture was perfect and I like that this cake is creative and different. My big-little sister was skeptical of this at first, but loved it and thought that the beets gave it great color. My brother wants to try it with a cranberry swirl instead, which I think is a great idea.

We made this for Valentine's Day in a heart bundt pan. And cut it before we remembered to take a picture. Whoops!

You could probably also do something with this recipe for Halloween!

This Cranberry Coffee Cake was a massive hit!!! I don't even know where to start. I LOVE Cranberries! They're one of my favorite ingredients. The tartness of the cranberries went perfectly with the cake and the glaze was delicious too.

This cake would be great for Christmas!

I actually wouldn't mind adding a few more cranberries next time..

In breaking news, I think that Apple Fritter Cake is the best apple recipe that we have ever made!!! I think that the glaze is what makes this so special. The recipe involves a new technique for us where we poked holes in the cake with a skewer so when we poured the glaze over, it sunk into the cake. The cake was simple and moist and the perfect base for the brown sugar glaze.

You could see the holes in the top though, which looked a little weird. Maybe a light dusting of powdered sugar would help with that??

My whole family loves cinnamon rolls, so it wasn't a big surprise that we all liked this Giant Cinnamon Roll Scone. It was a perfect homey winter weekend breakfast and the kitchen smelled incredible. It is a fair amount of work for something that doesn't end up all that different from regular scones, but it was still fun to make!

First you make a scone dough, pat out and fold over the dough to layer it, and then cover it with a cinnamon sugar filling.

Then you cut your rectangle into strips and roll them up like cinnamon rolls. It turns out that you're actually supposed to wrap the rolls around each other, but doing it this way works too.

You chill the prepared rolls and cut them before baking but leave the cut pieces together in a circle. And then you slice through the pieces fully and separate them once they're baked and cooled.

Another cinnamon sugar breakfast was Cinnamon Swirl Bread. It was good, but very simple. The flavor and texture were great, and anybody would like it. The best part about this recipe is that it's designed to make ahead, so it's a good one when you want something homemade that you can prepare in advance.

This looks pretty and would be a nice recipe to give as a gift too..

I will say that the cinnamon swirl came out looking really perfect!!

A healthy, but delicious breakfast was Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal Bars. These are sweetened with maple syrup and don't have any refined sugar. My big-little sister liked these a lot and said that they were "good and soft and moist and delish," and she especially liked that the cinnamon wasn't overpowering. My mom really liked these a lot too.

I liked that these were soft and not crunchy, but that the oatmeal still added nice texture.

And these happen to cut beautifully, which I think is important if you're serving them to other people. Bars with raggedy edges just never look as nice!

Another healthy breakfast that we enjoyed a lot was Healthy Lemon Cranberry Bread. This recipe is also sweetened with maple syrup and moistened with apple sauce, but the lemon and cranberries obviously give it a totally different flavor profile.

People tend to associate cranberries with the Christmas season, but this bread would be great to serve year-round.

You can see how this bread has a lighter crumb to it, so it isn't overly dense.

A recipe that got very mixed reviews was Harvest Spice Bread. The recipe suggests using both shredded apple and carrots, but we just used carrots because my mom thought that my big-little sister would prefer it that way, but she still didn't like it!!!! Apparently she also doesn't like walnuts in her bread, which we didn't know. The rest of us liked this a lot. It's basically just like a carrot cake.

Even though the walnuts killed this for my big-little sister, I thought that they added a lot.

A interesting dish was My New Roots' Life-Changing Loaf of Bread. To make this you create a mixture of oats and seeds that you mix with your wet ingredients, and then you let it sit in a loaf pan for up to a day before you bake it. It was pretty much like a baked loaf of unsweetened granola. It was hearty and flavorful. I had mine with jam to add some sweetness. My dad didn't love this and neither did my brother, but my mom was a huge fan.

This recipe is both vegan and gluten free, so it's useful if you're cooking for people with dietary restrictions.

I was surprised, but this sliced easily without falling apart.

A more traditional bread was Best Dinner Rolls. We loved these so much that we made them three times in a week. The recipe is for simple white rolls, but then it lists multiple seasoning variations. We made the parmesan-garlic version. They smelled so good when they came out of the oven.

A nice thing about this recipe is that the different variations just involve sprinkling them with alternative toppings before baking. So that means that you could bake a single recipe and still do a mixture of all the different kinds.

These have a soft pillowy texture that everybody loved.

A very successful dinner was Jose Andres's Red Snapper Stew. I loved this and it had FANTASTIC flavor. First you make something called a picada, which is a classic Catalan sauce. You toast nuts and bread and grind them with garlic and eventually you add that entire mixture to the stew. You're supposed to grate tomatoes, but we just used a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes since it's not fresh tomato season, and that worked great. It was a tad bit spicy, but not 'I need a ton of water' spicy. All in all, everyone loved this.

The recipe recommends serving with grilled bread.

Probably our most universally popular recent dinner was Maryland Crab Cakes. I loved these! These are mostly jumbo lump crabmeat, without a lot of filler and minimal mayonnaise, which is exactly how I like my crab cakes. And these can be formed in advance and then get baked in the oven, so they're way healthier and less messy than recipes that have you fry them.

We served these over a salad with a citrus vinaigrette with orange segments and purple sweet potatoes, which are very blue zone!

Another good dinner was Black Bean and Rice Enchiladas. My big-little sister said that she liked the beans and she liked how the tortillas got a little bit crunchy. My brother liked having these for dinner after swim practice.

It's amazing how the color you get from sprinkling some herbs on top of a dish makes things look so much better!

For the super bowl we made Crab-Stuffed Mushrooms. They were creamy and cheesy and really good. We baked our mushroom caps in advance for about 20 minutes to release any liquid, and I recommend doing that. Nobody wants soggy stuffed mushrooms.

Their the perfect size to pop into your mouth.

Another great Superbowl recipe was Easy Taco Dip. This just has a flavored cream cheese and sour cream base layered with typical taco toppings. My dad said that he unexpectedly loved this. All of the ingredients went perfectly together! The texture was great too.

We served it on tortilla chips. My nails were green here because we filmed one of our FourKidsCooking St. Patrick's Day shows that morning!

We rounded our our Super Bowl menu with our standard guacamole recipe (it's not online, but I can send it to you if you're interested!) and Focaccia Pizza. This recipe was a big hit. You start the dough up to 48 hours in advance, which makes this recipe very easy to execute. I thought that this was cheesy and tomato-y and all around amazing. The ratio of dough to topping was perfect. My dad loved this!

This is like a cross between deep dish pizza and delicious tomato focaccia.

You can see how it's similar to Sicilian pizza here, just with a slightly softer crust..

For our Super Bowl dessert we made Honey Butter Toast with Salted Caramel Sauce. This was an Instagram recipe, which is always risky, but worked out really well this time! To make this, you spread sliced brioche with a honey butter mixture and bake it in the oven.

I'm excited to make this for guests this summer!

We had leftover salted caramel sauce and so we used it to make Salted Caramel Brownies. These were very good brownies, but I can't say that the salted caramel flavor came through.

This is another recipe that cuts very cleanly, which automatically makes me like it more!

A cookie with fantastic texture was Pumpkin Snickerdoodles. These were so tender and I love white chocolate, so I loved including it in these, but it's optional and these cookies would be great plain too.

I do think that adding the white chocolate makes for prettier cookies!

We wanted to make chewy pumpkin bars and lots of recipes have you blot the pumpkin to make baked goods more chewy and less cakey. So it occurred to us that maybe we should try draining the pumpkin through cheese cloth, like we do to make yogurt cheese.

This worked really well. We ended up losing a ton of liquid through the straining.

So then we used the pumpkin to make Chewy Pumpkin Bars. Depending on your perspective, we might have overdone it draining the pumpkin. These came out REALLY chewy. They almost had the consistency of mochi. I liked them a lot, but they had a very unique chewy texture that I wouldn't necessarily call a bar. We added Cream Cheese Frosting and I thought that this ended up a really delicious and unique dessert. But I will admit that it's slightly weird.

I think that you can almost see how the texture of these is more similar to mochi than cake.

A great recipe that I think we elevated even further was Honey Butter Cookies. We made them into sandwich cookies and used Cream Cheese Frosting. We've added cream cheese frosting to a lot of recipes lately, but it really does make most things better!! My friend Kate LOVED these!! The cream cheese frosting was tangy and balanced the sweetness from the honey.

I thought that these looked professional and sophisticated.

One of my big-little sister's recent favorites was Double the Streusel Apple Butter Bars. She liked the flavor. My mom really liked these too. They're like a bar version of apple crisp with lots of crisp topping, which is definitely the best part!

It's important to allow time for these to cool completely before cutting so that they hold together nicely.

For Valentine's day I brought in cupcake ice cream cones to school for my class. We used the recipes for Perfect Vanilla Cupcakes and Vanilla Buttercream Frosting. First we filled ice cream cones with cupcake batter and baked them. Then we used pink candy melts to drip on top of the cupcakes and down the sides to look like melting ice cream. Finally you frost and decorate them. These tasted fantastic and the cones were like a bonus!!

I was soooooo proud of these!!!!!!!!!

I used edible pink glitter to decorate them and it looked like a glitter bomb went off in the box we used to transport them!

One morning we made Funfetti Bundt Cake. But first we made this Vanilla Sheet Cake with Whipped Buttercream Frosting and dyed it red. We cut the sheet cake into hearts and stuck them into the bundt cake before pouring the funfetti batter over them and baking. The idea was for the hearts to be a surprise when we cut the cake.

The cake itself looked cute and festive!

The only problem was that we needed to put the hearts in upside down to get them to be upright once we flipped the bundt pan and we didn't think about that. So next time we'd remember to do that, but they still looked cute anyway.

Another Valentine's Day recipe that we made was Sparkle Sweetheart Cookies. These are really good sugar cookies that you can decorate with any kind of chocolate hearts. We used filled ones from Ghirardelli. The crème brûlée were my brother's favorites.

We brought these to one of my brother's squash matches and the entire team really liked them!

Another Valentine's Day recipe that we made that was super simple was S'mores Bark. To make this, we just melted pink marshmallows in the microwave and spread them over graham crackers. Then we covered that with melted chocolate and added Valentine's Day themed m&m's on top. This was super easy and great if you love s'mores. I love chocolate and marshmallows so it worked for me!

We added sea salt on top, which I thought was a great addition.

These were really sticky, so we placed parchment between the layers when we boxed them to give to people.

We really did a lot for Valentine's Day this year. Maybe my favorite project was Red Velvet Whoopie Pies, which we filled with Cream Cheese Frosting (surprise!). The fun part was decorating them! Whoopie pies are basically like two pieces of cake with frosting in the middle, almost like inside-out cupcakes. I probably like sandwich cookies more, but I like whoopie pies too.

I loved how they looked with all the different sprinkles.

I am OBSESSED with peanut butter cookies, so there was no way that I wouldn't have liked these Peanut Butter Sweetheart Cookies. They are similar to peanut butter blossoms, which are the peanut butter cookies with a Hershey's kiss in the center. I liked these even more though because using peanut butter filled hearts adds extra peanut butter flavor!

We added on pink chocolate lentils for decoration. It was tricky getting them to stick, but I thought that the added color they gave looked great.

We did this version with pink peanut butter hearts too!

We also used the pink hearts on top of Ultimate Fudge Brownies with Peanut Butter Chips and they were great. We put the hearts in the freezer to get them very cold before we set them on top of the hot brownies. We wanted them to melt a teeny bit to stick to the brownies, but not so much that they lost their shape.

You can see how they melted a little bit on the bottom, but that was good to hold them in place.

We also made Valentine's Day themed M&M's Brownies and they didn't look pretty, but they tasted good. My mom thought that they were only okay, but Rachel liked these a lot. I like my brownies really fudgy and these brownies were kind of in the middle between fudgy and cakey. I did like the m&ms because they added extra chocolatey-ness!

This really shows how brownies that don't cut cleanly never look as appealing.

Our friend Layssa found us these cute Valentine's Day boxes! They were a good size and so they were great for giving people an assortment of Valentine's Day treats. I liked giving these out because that way people could try more than one thing.

I thought that these looked very festive.

My mom saw the idea on instagram to make marshmallow and fruit skewers look like friendship bracelets (which are a big part of being a Taylor fan!) and so she put them in our Valentine's Day themed lunch. She rolled the blueberries in pink edible glitter and she mixed in marshmallows and drew on the letters using food dye pens.

These would be great to serve at an Eras Tour party with different songs or albums or messages on them!

One of our more involved recent projects was making a Valentine's Day cake roll. We started with an Instagram recipe, and that had some mixed results. The first part went well. You make a mixture almost similar to making sprinkles and pipe tiny hearts onto parchment.

Piping the hearts was tricky. We piped three sheets of parchment before we made a sheet that was good!

Then you make a batter for a cake roll and pour it over the parchment hearts and bake it.

When you peel off the parchment, you end up with the pattern on your cake. Cool right?

But unfortunately, when we frosted this and tried to roll it up as a cake roll, it broke. So we turned it into little tea cake sandwiches. These were cute, but we wanted to try it again and get it right.

So for our second attempt (this made for long day of baking!), we used a different recipe for Perfect Swiss Cake Roll. This sounded promising, since perfect was what we were going for! And it worked!!

Doesn't this look so great? I'm glad that we learned this technique because I feel as if we could experiment with different kinds of patterns. Maybe next year we could do little trees for Christmas! Or stars for July 4th would be cool too!

And this is what it looked like sliced. I'm so happy that we didn't give up!

I hope that you got some ideas for new recipes to try reading this. Definitely find our Instagram @fourkidscooking and watch our @Fourkidscooking YouTube channel and tell us what you think. Don't forget to like and subscribe too! We're already starting to think about fun Easter baking so stay tuned!!!!