Cool Kids Cook by Donna Hay

Donna Hay, of Marie Claire fame, is the Pied Piper of the Kitchen. She is calling up children in their droves in an attempt to teach them that cooking is as much fun as it is an essential life skill, something we all manage to forget in these days of ready-made meals.

Donna turned her hand to children's cookbooks when she failed to find one that reached her expectations. Cool Kids Cook is for seven year olds and over and with this book, her aim is to catch them young. To her credit, she has the formula to success. With two-dimensional drawings in whacky colours, Donna gets the attention of these little chefs before they have even picked up a wooden spoon.

The first few pages are devoted to the basics: safety in the kitchen, equipment and helpful tips to make cooking easier. The latter being things that grown ups should also remember. Each recipe has a list of the tools required to do the job. Get them organised early on and they will find cooking so much easier. The instructions have been simplified within an inch of their meaning and three easy steps is all that it takes.

The recipes are run of the mill but that is how you are going to win kids over by letting them cook food they know they like. But having said that, she still manages to skip over the globe and include recipes for curry, noodles and offerings from Mexico. Honey and peanut lamb kebabs are tasty and fun to eat off the skewers, of course. Her recipes for Jungle Chocolate Bombs, muffins charged with chocolate and Chockie Moon Rocks, biscuits made with coconut and marshmallows, are sure to go down well. We particularly like the chocolate no-bake slice, which is a mixture of biscuits covered in chocolate, butter, caster sugar and cream cheese. We definitely like the sound of that one.

This book will be a hit with children. It is not condescending and will encourage children to cook. The book is funky with great use of colour in the cartoon drawings, apparently more appealing psychologically than photographs. The stickers at the back of the book allow them to earmark recipes they like (and very sensibly, the ones they don't).

Children cannot but be drawn into the joy of cooking by Cool Kids Cook and hopefully, they will catch the food bug for life.

AD
*****

Publication Details
96 pages. Drawings by Danielle Holden. £9.99
ISBN 1740450140. Published by Murdoch Books.
2000

Order directly from amazon.

For more information on Cool Kids Cook, visit the website, www.coolkidscook.com