Cooking Pizza With A Toddler!

After writing my last post all about wanting pizza, my little guy got hungry. And guess what he said? “Make pizza? With some cheese?”

Well, more like he sing-said the line from our Zumbini® class song. So we had a cooking adventure making pizza together!

This was the perfect opportunity to do some cooking with my little singing chef! We decided to make pizza for dinner using most of the steps from our song as we went along. (This was already close to dinner time, so we used Naan bread rather than making dough from scratch.)

He was so excited to spread the sauce, shake the spices, toss the cheese, toss more cheese, toss cheese to the dog, etc.

Yes, there is a lot more prep work for the adult (not to mention the cleanup), but the experience he gained was worth every second.

One thing that really helps when cooking with tiny people is to prepare as much as possible before letting them in the kitchen. Think of those cool videos we love on social media, the ones where everything is pre-chopped/peeled/measured in lovely little bowls.

Depending on the age of your little one, you don’t have to do everything ahead of time. For instance, I put a smaller amount of cheese into a bowl for him to place on the pizza so that his sauce-covered hands didn’t keep going back into the original cheese container. With a fruit salad, a toddler can safely cut up bananas or strawberries with a plastic knife and your supervision (less prep work for you!)

Best part? He proudly ate the whole thing without any bribing or “One more bite, please” from me! When kids help in preparing foods they find exciting, they are much more likely to eat the food.

For anyone else entering that fun toddler world of picky eating, I highly suggest cooking together!

Now all together, “I wanna pizza, I wanna pizza….”