Three Things a Child Can Cook Without Going Near the Stove

Fruit and Yoghurt Cups, From About Two

For two cups: a large pot of plain yoghurt, four plain sweet biscuits, one ripe banana, and a handful of strawberries or half a mango. Honey is optional, and so is half a lime.

Do the cutting first. Slice the banana, halve the strawberries lengthways, cube the mango, and quarter any grapes lengthways rather than across.

Put the biscuits in a sealed bag and hand it over. A small child presses it flat with both palms, and the target is crumbs rather than dust.

Squeeze the lime into the yoghurt and let them stir it in. Use a bowl twice the size the amount needs, because mixing at this age is vigorous.

Then it is spoon, tip, repeat. Crumbs at the bottom of each glass, yoghurt over them, fruit, more yoghurt, crumbs on top.

Keep the crumbs dry until they go in, because a wet biscuit turns to paste. Leave the honey out if a baby under one will get a taste, since IDAI advises against honey before twelve months. IDAI's choking advice is why the grapes go lengthways: cut food small, and stay with a child while they eat.

Banana Oat Balls, From About Three

This one has no adult step at all. Two very ripe bananas, a cup and a half of rolled oats, three tablespoons of desiccated coconut and a pinch of salt make about a dozen balls.

Let them peel the bananas, which is real work at three and the reason to buy them spotted. Then mash with a fork until there is nothing left to squash.

Tip the oats, coconut and salt in on top. Let them mix with a spoon until it stops working, then with both hands.

Now leave it alone for ten minutes. The oats drink up the banana while it sits, and skipping this is why a batch crumbles when you roll it.

Scoop a heaped teaspoon at a time, roll between the palms, then roll each ball in more coconut. A child of three makes lopsided ones and a child of five makes round ones.

If it crumbles, mash in more banana a spoonful at a time; if it sticks, wet their palms rather than adding water. Chill for half an hour or they fall apart in the hand. Leave whole nuts out, and crush them first if you want crunch.

Cream Cheese Pinwheels, From About Four

Pinwheels look like effort and are not. Two large flour tortillas, four tablespoons of cream cheese, four slices of cooked chicken, four lettuce leaves and a handful of grated carrot make eight pieces.

Give them a blunt table knife and cream cheese at room temperature, because cold cheese tears the tortilla. Tell them to reach the edge all the way round, because a bare edge unrolls.

Lettuce gets torn rather than cut, into pieces flat enough to lie down. Then the chicken goes on in a single layer, the carrot gets scattered over, and the filling stops there.

Rolling is your job and so is the slicing. Roll each one tight from the near edge, wrap it in cling film, chill it for twenty minutes, then cut across into rounds about two fingers thick.

Two fillings is the limit, because a third splits the roll as it turns. A four-year-old spreads to the edge alone and a two-year-old spreads thickly in the middle, and both roll fine.

What Can a Small Child Genuinely Do?

Tearing comes first, from around eighteen months: lettuce, bread, soft herbs, anything that gives way. It is the only kitchen skill a child arrives already knowing.

Squeezing and mashing follow at around two, on a hand juicer or under a fork. Mixing lands at the same age, if the bowl is far bigger than the amount and sits at their chest height.

Spooning and layering arrive near two and a half, spoon-and-drop rather than spoon-and-spread. Spreading needs a wrist that turns, so it starts around three, and rolling is last because both hands work differently at once.

What stays with you: anything with an edge, anything hot, anything measured exactly. Everything else can go wrong without costing you the dish.

Which Mess Is Worth Accepting?

Accept the floor. Oat dust, crumbs, a ring of yoghurt around the bowl and a child eating a third of the strawberries are the cost of it working.

The whole packet is not, so decant oats and coconut into small bowls first. A tipped packet ends the session and a tipped bowl does not.

A tea towel under the bowl stops it travelling, and a damp cloth within reach means they clean their own hands. The one rule worth holding is hands out of the mouth and then back into the shared bowl, so give them their own tasting spoon.

What Do You Do When They Lose Interest Halfway?

They will go, almost always at the repetitive step: the seventh ball, the second tortilla, the fourth spoon of yoghurt. Nothing has gone wrong, and the response is to finish it yourself and say so out loud.

Do not call them back and do not bargain with the food. A dish that turns into an argument is one they refuse to eat afterwards.

Save one visible step for their return: the last crumbs on top, the roll in coconut, the first cut through the pinwheels. Match the recipe to the day next time, because the cups take five minutes and the pinwheels take twenty.

When nothing in the kitchen holds them, our guide to types of kids activities covers what else works at home. The activity finder is where to look when the answer is outside the house.