Cooking with kids – Wheels on the bus sweet and savoury

I’m really going to try and make an effort and have a go at cooking with J and possibly T on a weekly basis. This is the food that we cooked as part of the 30 days to hands on play (day 18 of the challenge). They are Wheels on the Bus – we made savoury and sweet versions and they are VERY easy to make.

What you need to make the wheels on the bus

Some ready rolled puff pastry
Tomato Puree
Grated Cheese
Selection of Herbs
Jam or other sweet filling that can be cooked

How you make the wheels on the bus

J sprinkling on herbs onto the wheel base

I used read rolled puff pastry as I don’t have the patience to make my own puff pastry and this is quick and easy for use with a toddler. I cut the roll into half – with one half for the savoury wheels and the other half for the sweet wheels. Into some none breakable balls I put some tomato puree, herbs and grated some cheese (our grater is lethal so I did this for J) then I showed him how to spread the tomato puree onto the pastry using a spoon. He loved spreading and kept telling me he was painting the pastry with tomatoes. He then sprinkled the herbs on top  sprinkling them as we had with glitter previously.

J adding cheese to the wheel base

One of the things that I love about this recipe is that it has so much independence to it. J was able to put the cheese onto the pastry wheel base himself and then together we rolled up the wheels. Because I haven’t got any knives suitable for J to use yet I cut up the pastry roll into 4 wheels and put them on a baking sheet with some grease proof paper.

Our savoury wheels waiting to go into the oven

I pre-heated our oven to 180 degrees C (sorry no idea what that is in F or gas mark – this was an on my toes recipe) and put them in for 18 minutes to cook.

J making our sweet wheels on the bus

As Rainy Day Dad doesn’t like cheese I knew we had to make some sweet wheels on the bus as well.  For this we used some strawberry jam, J loved mixing it up in his bowl to make it easier to spread and then adding it to the pastry. He was really good as well waited till we had done all of the rolling of the wheels and cutting them into their 4 separate wheels before asking if he could have some jam. I then put these in the oven at the same temperature and for the same amount of time.

Our sweet and savoury wheels on the bus

They say the proof is in the eating – and for the first time ever J wanted to eat what we had made. He happily devoured one of the sweet ones and tried one of the savoury ones as well. T as normal ate all of her Sweet Wheel on the bus and then ate the other half of J’s savoury one that he didn’t finish.