With two parents cooking in the kitchen, we have modeled cooking and always involved our children in the dinner planning and preparations. By doing so, we were bound to grow a child or two that loves cooking.

Emmalynn, our middle child, will tell you that she wants to be a chef when she grows up. Therefore, it only seemed logical that she would request a cooking themed birthday party for her 9^th birthday.

When she mentioned the idea, I asked her what types of things she would like to make. At first, she had some very elaborate recipes in mind but when we encouraged her to keep the menu for the party simple, she developed some really tasty ideas.

Emmalynn loves Mini Caprese Salad Skewers. She enjoys stacking the tomatoes and mozzarella cheese pearls onto stick and making fun patterns alternating the two ingredients. Since some children do not like tomatoes, we tweaked this salad recipe a bit by adding black olives and thick cucumber slices to the ingredients which the guests would stack on their 10” skewers.

Some petite chefs only wanted cheese.

Sticking with the skewers, we offered sliced chunks of fresh fruit, such as grapes, strawberries, watermelon, blueberries for the guests to make fruit kabobs.

Since most kids love pizza, the main entrée would include the guests creating their own personal-sized pizza. Earlier that morning before the guests arrived, we made the pizza sauce following a basic marinara recipe, however, as much as we love making our own pizza dough, for time’s sake, we purchased Pillsbury classic Thin Crust. Iron Chef Allan rolled out the dough and then used a 6” wide cookie cutter to make the base for the personalized pizzas.

To offer a work surface and a baking sheet, we gave each guest a small square of aluminum foil. The mini chefs scooped and smeared the sauce over their crusts and then sprinkled on their toppings of shredded mozzarella, Applegate pepperoni, sliced olives and mushrooms.

Once their pizza creations were finished, we slid them in the oven and baked the pizzas for about five minutes. All the petite chefs loved their finished pizzas!

For dessert, our petite pastry chefs all decorated their own cupcakes with individual piping bags, a ZipLoc bag full of icing with a small tip cut off.We may have gone a little over board with the toppings: drippy purple icing, mini chocolate chips, mini peanut butter chips, mini marshmallows, mini M&Ms and gummy bears.

It definitely was the perfect mixture of ingredients and friends to whip up a wonderful birthday party!

Our little chef guests left with goodies bags full of items I found at the Dollar Tree to encourage them to continue their culinary adventures after the party. Each cooking inspired goodie bag contained spatulas, measuring cups, measuring spoons, an apron and cookie mix.

Not that it’s about the gifts, a few of them were the icing on Emmalynn’s day. Her favorite gifts were the LEGO Movie UniKitty Castle set and the sisters charm necklace from her big sister, Allana.

But the best present was delivered after the party when Emmalynn discovered a rainbow!