Making Pancakes With Linda Collister
by Molly O'Neill
With a little guidance from an expert, you can get your grandchildren to help prepare their favorite breakfast treat
"Grandparents have two things: experience and time," says Linda Collister, the author of Cooking With Kids (Ryland Peters & Small, 2003). "They have so much to show their grandchildren, their foods and traditions. Children aren’t afraid to experiment with new tastes when they’re with their grandparents."
The British-born author speaks from experience. She may have studied at Le Cordon Bleu in London and La Varenne in Paris, but the foundation for her career was laid in her grandmothers’ kitchens.
"They lived in a time when everything was made by hand. They survived two world wars and they made jam tarts, cookies, and lemon-curd tarts nearly every day,” she says, “and unlike my mother, they had time to show me how it was done."
Learning cooking, she said, was her first lesson in self-sufficiency. Collister brought her children into the kitchen even before they could speak. It stimulated their curiosity, she says. And it did something else:
"I want my children to stand on their own two feet when they leave my house, and so I teach them to cook."
Collister married an American and when their children visit their grandmother in New York, they eat rye bread and cheesecake, things they never have at home. She loves how her parents and in-laws expose her children to different traditions and communities and loves how certain dishes keep her children close to their grandparents.
"American-style" pancakes is such a dish. Collister’s husband grew up eating them with peanut butter and syrup. And pancakes, says the children’s cooking expert, also happen to be an excellent introduction to cooking. In fact, when her daughter was just 18 months old, Collister began including her in pancake-making.
"I’d sit her in the high chair and pull it to the counter so that she could watch what I was doing. When she a bit older, she could stir the batter, and then I’d pull her high chair near the stove so she could watch the pancakes cooking."
There’s a lot about cooking that can be learned in such a simple recipe. A child can witness the miraculous transformation of egg whites from liquid to foam. They can learn the difference between beating, mixing, and folding. They can learn the visual cues that signal that a pancake is ready to be flipped. Older children can do the flipping and separate egg whites. Younger children can be appointed "monitor" and put in charge of delivering each batch to the table.
In today’s fast-paced world, with families living at such great distances, weekend sleepovers are a wonderful way to spend a long, easy time together. Pancakes in the morning will have them begging to come back. Making the pancakes, says Collister “is a lovely tradition to start with your grandchildren.”
Continue to the recipe: Kid-Friendly Blueberry Pancakes
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