Beverley Glock, founder of the Splat!Cooking website and cookery school offers some great child-friendly recipes to get kids cooking what they pick.

Strawberry Tarts
Makes 12 Tarts

100g Plain ‘00’ Flour (or 100g Plain Flour + 50g Cornflour)
100g soft butter or margarine
50g caster sugar
A little extra flour
Strawberry jam
1 punnet of strawberries
Can of ‘squirt’ whipped cream or tub of vanilla ice cream

You will need.......Weighing scales, medium mixing bowl, bun or muffin tin, wooden spoon, rolling pin, 8cm biscuit cutter, sieve, spatula, fork, teaspoon, 12 x cake or muffin cases, wire rack, an adult!

First - wash your hands!

1. GET AN ADULT to turn the oven onto 170oc/325oF/Gas Mark 4 and put a shelf onto the bottom runner. (Aga Roasting oven - shelf on oven floor).

2. Place the cake or muffin cases in the bun or muffin tins.

3. Weigh out the butter and sugar, place these into the mixing bowl. GET AN ADULT to watch you and help whilst you use the wooden spoon to beat the sugar and butter together until the mixture is pale, white and fluffy. It should drop off the end of a spoon easily. This method of mixing is called ‘creaming’.

4. Weigh out the flour and sieve into the mixture.

5. Using the wooden spoon, stir everything together to form a dough. You may find it easier to do this using your hands.

6. Put the dough on a clean, lightly floured surface, dust the rolling pin with flour and gently flatten the dough - do not press too hard. Roll the dough out until it is around 1cm thick.

7. Carefully use the biscuit cutter to cut out biscuit shapes. Press gently into the bottom of the cake or muffin cases (this will form a small tart shape and prevent the tart sticking to the cake tin. Gather up the remaining dough, press it together and roll out again to make the remaining tarts.

8. Use the fork to gently stab each tart - this will stop them puffing up in the oven.

9. GET AN ADULT to put the tin into the oven (Aga: plain cold shelf on second set of runners) for 15-20 minutes. When they turn golden brown they are ready.

10. GET AN ADULT to remove them from the oven and leave them to cool for 10-15 minutes before you remove them from the cases and place them onto the wire rack.

11. Wash the strawberries and remove the stalk, GET AN ADULT to slice the strawberries.

Place a teaspoon of jam in the centre of each tart case, top up with sliced strawberries and finish with a squirt of whipped cream or spoonful of ice cream.

Eat quickly before the adults realise how good they are!

© SPLAT Cooking Parties Ltd 2006

• Mini Apple Tarts - click here for the recipe
• Upside Down Veggie Tarts - click here for the recipe
• Summer Fruit Cake - click here for the recipe
• Summer Pudding - click here for the recipe
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