Cooking with Kids: 3 Ingredient Spooky Cake Batter Cookies

Quick and easy post because this is too good not to share for all my momma friends. Right when I felt like we were in a good groove, I have recently become stressed with little things like even leaving the house with both kiddos. Alex is still our sweet angel baby but his schedule doesn't quiet sync with Caitlin's anymore, he's teething and waking up a little more at night so I'm exhausted, I usually seem to have one tired/hungry/grump that makes the day to day grind a little more difficult, and the whole Robinson clan is getting over a cold that managed to hit us all. Add on a sprinkling of Pinterest and mom guilt and I have been feeling like a failure to my toddler for not being able to throw together some fun activities aside from "please play with your brother, I'm trying to make my coffee!"

Enter the cake batter cookie...just go ahead and imagine a choir of angels singing now. I don't care if you're an awful baker, these are truly SO SIMPLE. I remember seeing the idea and making some after my baby sprinkle for Alex with some extra blue cake mix we had laying around. I had honestly forgotten about them until I was wracking my brain for something fun to do with Caitlin. She's very much in the "me help momma" phase when we are in the kitchen and she loves pretend play and making "cake" (everything is cake) in her play kitchen. She told me she wanted to make cookies so while I was rummaging through the pantry for supplies I came across a box of cake mix and my baking game suddenly became a whole lot easier.

Here's what you need:

- 1 box of cake mix, flavor does not matter

- 2 eggs

- 1/3 cup vegetable oil

- Preheated oven to 375

THAT'S IT! Seriously. How awesome is that?!

Mix the 3 ingredients together, plop down in the same size 'chunks' you would a normal cookie dough, bake @375 for 7-9 minutes and you're done!

Seriously, this is so simple and the best part is a helpful toddler, or even an older kiddo, is able to do quite a bit. Caitlin poured the cake mix in the KitchenAid, I measured the oil and she poured it in with the mix, and I took care of the eggs. She helped me turn the mixer on and watched in amazement as it whisked it all together. (Let's be honest, I watch in amazement too... the KitchenAid is my favorite thing in our kitchen!)

While they aren't the same consistency of plain sugar cookies, they're still easy to decorate and Caitlin's favorite thing to do is "sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle!" so she decorated some with some rainbow sprinkles. I told her the rest would be a surprise that I would decorate while she was napping. A quick Pinterest search for Halloween cookies gave me the idea for spiders and mummies and they were, again, SO EASY! Some melted chocolate and some zip bags for piping and I decorated the rest of the cookies in about 5 minutes.

The consistency is a bit different than that of regular cookie dough but still makes for good spatula licking, as evidenced by Caitlin.

These are a must do if your toddler is obsessed with baking like mine is. I LOVE regular, traditional cookies but these are just so simple with only 3 ingredients that you usually always have on hand and a quick bake time. It's a perfect activity for those small toddler hands to help with and can be decorated for any holiday! Give it a shot! I'd also love to hear about your favorite ways to incorporate your toddler with your cooking and baking!