Foodini Club

Penny (my 4-year-old little girl) and I were kindly sent another Foodini Club recipe kit to try and this month the theme was space. 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.

Inside we found our recipes, instructions and shopping lists, as well as all our dry ingredients (you will need to purchase additional fresh items) including organic plain flour and salt, oat flour, dried oregano, panela sugar, desiccated coconut, millet and oat flour. There was also a small craft kit containing natural food colouring, biodegradable little and sequins and glitter glue. All the packaging is either biodegradable (the plastic pouches go in the bin and biodegrade in 3-4 months) or recyclable.

Crater Cookies

Our first recipe was Crater Cookies which are based on an Australian recipe called Anzac Cookies but with a jammy dollop on top. As Penny is so little, a lot of adult supervision was required. I always take my time and make sure we are well prepared, that way we can spend our time talking about each step, smelling and feeling the different textures of the ingredients, mixing and making lots of mess in the process! Older children can obviously cut the vegetables with supervision and be more hands-on. Either way, it’s wonderful to get some quality time together and the recipes are easy to adapt depending on your child’s age and ability level.

Penny helped grate the carrots, mix the oats, mash the carrot, squeeze the syrup and roll the mixture into little balls. The best part was using her thumb to press a hole in the top of her cookies for the jam to go in. Our jam turned out a little chunky, more like a sweet carrot puree but we didn’t mind and I couldn’t believe it when she actually ate one when they were ready. Penny is an incredibly fussy eater. I love that the Foodini Club encourages her to try new flavours and learn where her food comes from.

Meteorettes

These meat-free balls are based on a Greek dish called Kolokythokeftedes. They are basically fritters with fresh courgette, fetta cheese and oregano. I’d never cooked millet before (kind of like couscous) so I learned something new this month too. Penny enjoyed squeezing the water out of the courgette and mixing all the ingredients together. It’s worth noting that some of the bags contain more than one ingredient i.e. the plain flour sachet also contained the salt, and I wasn’t paying close attentional so added way too much, so this might be something to watch out for, but the outcome still tasted delicious regardless.

There were also instructions on how to make ‘Moon Cheese’ and directions on how to make a ‘Galaxy Jar’. Simply squeeze the glitter glue and sprinkle the sequins and glitter into warm water in a jar and swirl it around to make a lovely spiny constellation of stars. Such a basic idea but Penny was absolutely mesmerised by it.

Our score: 9.8/ 10

Penny and I had so much fun making our space-themed goodies. I had to be very hands-on due to her age, but I didn't mind. It was lovely to get the opportunity to have some quality one-on-one time with her. With each step, she's learning something new whether it be the texture, flavour or smell of a new ingredient, how we use cooking equipment, how to follow instructions, where her food comes from or how to be safe in the kitchen. She always has so many inquisitive questions when we're opening our Foodini Club kit. I especially like that there was a theme this month as it kept her engaged and excited.

How would you rate Foodini Club ?