Kids in the Kitchen: Hot Chocolate Floats

Hopefully this is the start of a regular post on cooking with J (and C, eventually).

When we were at our WIC appointment last week, J spotted a Cookie Monster on a book in the nutritionist's office and she said, "Oh, do you like helping in the kitchen?  I have one last English copy if you want it."
"Yes, please!" said J's face, and with profuse thanks we left with J hugging his new most prized possession to his chest.

Source: www.wiley.com

So now we have an exciting new activity to keep us occupied: browsing through C is for Cooking and making the recipes one by one.  (This is not fast enough for J!)

He even couldn't wait to follow a recipe and wanted a smiley face tortilla for lunch (peanut butter with raisin eyes and nose, jam mouth, and cheese hair and beard).

The first recipe that caught his eye was for hot chocolate floats, essentially hot chocolate poured over a scoop of icecream.  (Quite an ingenious way to make sure the hot chocolate isn't too hot, if you ask me!)

The book has little icons which indicate appropriate steps for kids to help with (which is good for Mum not taking over) and each one has a a description or fun facts from a Sesame Street character to add motivation to the fabulous photos.

So J stirred the cocoa and sugar together, then stirred when the milk was added.  Mum heated the milk, added the chocolate chips and stirred some more.  J helped scoop icecream into each mug.  Mum poured the hot chocolate over the icecream.  J called Dad for his "hot chokit" and then we all sipped our yummy drinks (while C napped).

Ingredients to serve 4:

2T cocoa powder

1/4 c sugar

3 c milk

1 oz chocolate, chopped (or 6-8 chocolate chips)

4 scoops (vanilla) icecream (1 per mug)

The hot chocolate was fine on its own, without the icecream.  I'd leave out the chocolate next time - too hard to incorporate, just sat at the bottom!