Warm apple pies, sweet pumpkin, candy apples, slow cooked stew, and roasted pumpkin seeds.  What says autumn more than the smell of sweet apples?  Here are a few simple recipes to cook with your kids and let them taste the season.

 

 

Pumpkin & Sunflower Seeds:

 

If your kids haven’t tried them they may find it strange that you want to save the seeds from the pumpkin and then eat them, but they are delicious.  You will be able to smell them when they are done cooking in the oven. 

 

Once you’re ready to carve the pumpkin why not save the seeds and taste them?  Have the children help pull out the seeds, wipe them off and then set them aside.  Don’t rinse them just place them on a cookie sheet and drizzle with some oil and then add salt. 

 

Cook both pumpkin and sunflower seeds at 300 degrees.  Pumpkin seeds need to be cooked for 15-20 minutes and Sunflower seeds for 30-40 minutes.  When they are both done take them out of the oven let them cool and enjoy!

 

Apple Sauce:

 

Another fun thing for kids to do is make apple sauce.  Apples are cheap, healthy and all over the place in the autumn why not make use out of them?  You can use any apples that you like.  The best ones to use are the freshest.  If you can take your kids apple picking and then they can make simple and delicious apple sauce.  The nice thing about apple sauce is you can experiment with different ingredients and make it your own.

 

The first thing you need to do is peel, core and cut up the apples.  You can place them in a bowl with water and lemon juice while you cut up all the apples so they don’t turn brown.

 

Mister Rogers had a simple recipe that you can play with and make your own:

 

4 Apples

½ cup Water

¼ cup Sugar

Cinnamon

 

After you have the apples prepared put them in a pan with about ½ cup of water bring to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.  Then they are ready to add the ¼ cup sugar and you can add cinnamon to taste.  When the apple sauce is cool enough the kids can enjoy.  The nice thing is you can control what flavors you add and if you have smooth apple sauce or chunky.  The kids will really enjoy helping to make apple sauce.

 

 

 

 

Candy Apples:

 

Candy apples are a delicious treat for the kids and fun to make too.  You will need about 6 cleaned apples with sticks pushed in the top of them and about 35 caramel candies.

 

Before you begin you can have the kids pick out their favorite toppings and place them on paper plates with spoons so they are ready to cover the candy apples when they are done.

 

Simply place the caramel and two tablespoons water in a bowl over a pan of steaming water on a low to medium heat.  Once they are done melting roll the apples in the candy and then you can let them set in the fridge or have the kids pick different toppings to cover the apples with.

 

The kids will have fun with any recipe that they can help come up with this season.  Once they get involved in the process everyone will all have lots of fun while learning in the process.