Welcome to Cooking With Toddlers! Cooking with toddlers can be daunting, challenging, anxiety producing, and….MESSY. But completed with some extra planning, modifications and of course patience, cooking with toddlers can be fun and actually enjoyable.

At Cooking With Toddlers, you will find various resources to help reduce the planning and guesswork needed to successfully cook with your toddler. Using my background in occupational therapy, I broke down recipes to contain manageable toddler tasks at 3 different skill levels in order to help set our toddlers up for success when cooking with us. The skill level your toddler is at may be dependent upon their age, fine motor skill development, and experience with cooking.

Each Cooking With Toddlers recipe has been toddler approved and successfully cooked with my toddlers. My goal is to help you learn, through these recipes, how to include your toddler in everyday type cooking so that you can successfully include your toddler with cooking your family’s favorite dishes! Additionally, you will find supporting fine motor activities to help further support your toddler’s skill development. Happy cooking!

For optimal viewing of recipe directions with corresponding toddler instructions, please view on a desktop or tablet device.

Each Cooking With Toddlers recipe contains General Directions and corresponding Toddler Specific Instructions with 3 expandable skill levels: Beginner, Experienced, + Pro – displayed as seen below.. Ages listed with each skill level are suggested age ranges based upon typical skill development. Note that these are suggested age ranges and your toddler may develop these skills earlier or later depending upon how often they practice these skills and their overall skill development progression.

There are a few items you may want to purchase as well in order to help set your toddler up for success. See Recommended Cooking Supplies list for specific examples available for purchase on Amazon.

• Kitchen Tower: helps your toddler safety reach the counter top. Safety nets can be added to the back to further increase safety with our little toddlers. There are different styles of kitchen towers and the one you chose will depend upon your family’s wants/needs: standard, fold-able, and convertible.
• Toddler Knives: these are created with little hands in mind. They are sharp enough to cut through food but won’t cut your toddler. There are 2 main styles – chopper and serrated.

What about our littlest toddlers, 12-18 month olds? Can they be included in the kitchen as well?

YES! This is a great age to get them started in the kitchen and help to build their interest in cooking. There are 3 main jobs our toddlers can help with until they start showing readiness to transition to beginner toddler chef!

• Mini Kitchen Manager: Building interest in food and cooking is the first step, so let them watch you cook! If you plan to use a kitchen tower (I highly recommend this), then start getting them used to standing in the tower. Play activities in their tower is great here too. When first starting, you may need another person present and I recommend using a safety net for increased safety. We want our toddlers to be able to safely and securely stand in their kitchen tower for a minimum of 5 minutes in order to help with simple cooking tasks.
• Professional Taste Testers: giving them bits of food while you are cooking is another great way to increase their interest, and usually leads to an increase in food acceptance and vegetable consumption. My toddlers eat way more vegetables while cooking than they do during the actual meal!
• Simple Tasks: Once they are safely standing in the kitchen tower (or can complete from a high chair), giving them simple tasks such as putting prepped ingredients into containers or washing fruits and veggies is a great way to introducing them to helping with cooking.