A Very Fun Dessert to Make With Kids

Kudos for sharing the key lime pie recipe, and for the original poster of the recipe. As an avowed key lime purist, this recipe most reflects what we consider an authentic key lime pie, although there are other versions. We see too many recipes advocating the use of a pre-made crust (not a drop of butter) and bottled “Key West lime juice” (not a drop of actual key lime). Authenticity matters.

I love making baked oatmeal bars with my toddler. He likes to eat the oatmeal and flour just as much as the blueberries or chocolate chips, lol. It’s just a bunch of dump-in and stir ingredients, so perfect for little ones! And he loves to eat them, too.

Apple crisp/crumble – especially if you have one of the apple spiralizer doo-hickeys that peels, cores, and slices the apple in one go. The kids absolutely love spinning the apples, and it eliminates needing to hand sharp knives to little kids. The crumble topping can be scrunched together with your hands and is very forgiving if ratios are a bit off, or if it gets aggressively mixed before topping. You can also throw in extra fruits like fresh/frozen cranberries to add colour and a pop of flavour. Only trouble is having to wait so long while it bakes!

We do Poetry Teatime with neighborhood kids every Friday, and my boys take turns picking whatever we make and then baking with me. It’s such fun one-on-one time with them! It’s also a really fun way to incorporate manners, poetry, and playtime into our weekly rhythm. If we’re not feeling creative, our go-to recipes are triple chocolate chip cookies, double chocolate banana bread, blackberry cobbler, vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting. My boys got me the Great British Bake-Off cookbook for Christmas, and we’ve tried several of the recipes. They’re time-consuming, but also absolutely delicious!

My 5 year old daughter loves helping me make Smitten Kitchen’s Dutch Baby! It’s so easy, with lots of rest time, while the oven preheats and the 12 minutes while it cooks up nice and fluffy, to prep the other parts of her breakfast (or dinner, if you want a savory Dutch Baby). Plus it uses up plenty of eggs from our backyard chickens. It’s my favorite way to start a weekend.

Yessss and my kids LOVE to eat key lime pie! You can also buy the little pre-made crusts and make this even easier for the littlest littles… :D

My husband’s family is from Key West (goes back five generations there!) and of course, key lime pie is a specialty. I love my father in law’s key lime pie, but if I’m on the island, my favorite is from a restaurant called Blue Heaven. There are so many good things about this pie (the super tall meringue, the bright and creamy filling – but what makes it the best pie of all is the crust. I think they crush up ginger snaps (or maybe do a mixture of graham crackers and gingersnaps) because it has a warm spice to it. It.Tastes.So.Good. If anyone is looking to up their crust game, gingersnaps are your friend!

When we were little, we used to make icebox eclair cakes at the beach! There’s absolutely no baking involved, it’s all assembly and then letting it sit in the fridge, so it’s a great first recipe for kids to make without any grownup help. I don’t have a recipe, but here’s one that looks right: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/7304/eclair-cake/

My favorite recipe for the kids to make and eat: smitten kitchen’s marble banana bread! Involves mashing and stirring and doesn’t require a mixer. Measurements are also fairly straightforward. The only edit I have is to half the chocolate chips it calls for. It’s too much in the bread- and the kids are all too happy to eat chips as they bake :)

Oh, key lime cake sounds great against Winter blues. I have to save that recipe for colder foggy days. We love arranging a dessert into water glasses consisting of 1. layer Hobbits buiscuits (but any type of oat buiscuit will do) 2. layer greek yoghurt and 3. layer apple sauce. Very simple but arranging it into the glasses makes the young AND the grown-up kids very happy. :)

This time of year, it’s warm apple crisp (hard to mess up) with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and caramel apples. Caramel apples are fun because they can be left plain or dipped in whatever your kids like: nuts, sprinkles, etc.

Banana muffins. They’re easy, there’s so much sugar in them they are practically cupcakes, and the kiddos sprinkle sprinkles on top before baking. Sprinkles on baked goods got us through the pandemic! They make any dreary winter day happier, too. :o)

Not sure exactly how we got here, but each of my boys has a “specialty” that only they make for the family. My oldest (13) has perfected a one bowl brownie recipe and my youngest (11) makes blueberry muffins from Smitten Kitchen. They can make them independently from start to finish and take a lot of pride in that being their special thing for the family. I can just see them making these for prospective dates, their future kids, etc and it makes me so happy.

We like to make the NYT kitchen sink cookies. But we split the dough in half and let them each add their own pick of sweet and savory. Sometimes we make it a competition to see what combo tastes the best.

I just made Lemon Bars with my almost 2-year-old. He loved juicing the lemons and squishing the flour-butter crust :)

The New York Times has a Strawberry Spoon Cake that we’ve made several times. My three year old LOVES it because she can do 90% of it herself. And I’m not typically that kind of hands-on baking mom— it’s just a perfectly simple recipe and yet just fancy enough to feel special. And just like the key lime pie, there are some fun elements like smashing the strawberries (I give her a potato masher and let her go to town) and spooning the berries over the batter. Also, no electric mixer and no eggs— so I don’t have to cringe inside as she decimates an egg through her fist, as she does 😋