Foodini Club – November 2020: The Scottish Pack

Foodini Club is an award-winning cooking club for budding young chefs ages 3-12. Every month, a food exploration kit is delivered to your door. Each pack is full of wonderful ideas, information and ingredients to get your little ones exploring, making, baking and creating in the kitchen.

This month’s pack was a special edition to celebrate St. Andrew’s Day. It three unique and interesting recipes that all contained a nutritious twist on a traditional classic. I think this was the largest pack that I’ve ever received from them!  The Scottish pack contained all the dry ingredients to make Bothy Bites (a new take on Millionaire’s Shortbread containing hearty Scottish oats), Spicy Veggie Haggis and, my personal favourite, Burn’s Bombs (haggis, potato and swede fritters).

There was also a crafting kit containing instructions on how to make paper thistles (as well as paper straws and templates), as well as a ‘Kitchen Skills 101’ factsheet on how to chop onions and a sachet from the ‘Botanical Badger’. Each month the Botanical Badger introduces children to a herb or spice that enhances their dishes. This month the pack contains Allspice. Although penny screwed her nose at it, I’m very tempted to add it to some warmed apple juice to create a festive winter warmer. That’s what I love about Foodini Club, it encourages children to explore different ingredients with varying textures, flavours and smells as well as learning important cooking skills and learning about where their food comes from and how it is prepared.

Inside the pack, you’ll find easy to follow instructions, pre-prepared shopping list and your pre-measured and labelled dry ingredients all in biodegradable packaging. There were brightly coloured packets of sunflower seeds, Kallo Organic Stock Cube, spelt flour, porridge oats, pinhead oats, nutmeg, cinnamon, panela sugar, breadcrumbs, dairy-free chocolate chips and organic pitted dates.

My little girl is 4, so does she require a lot of help and supervision (although she impresses me every time with her knowledge about food and where it comes from) but I don’t mind because I love having the opportunity to spend some quality time with her. She loved using ‘Brenda the Blender’ to grind up the oats, spreading the chocolate (and licking the spoon), as well as combining and mixing all spices, beans and stock together, mashing the potatoes and rolling the ‘Burns Bombs’ into balls. The recipes are designed to encourage independence in the kitchen, however, they are completely adaptable depending on the age and stage of your child.