We seem to be losing an essential skill in our society. Cooking. Real homemade cooking. The sort of cooking that Grandma used to cook for you. It’s important to teach cooking skills to kids, especially now when it seems so rare that kids are taught to cook. And the best place to start is homemade candy.

If you start teaching your kids to cook something they don’t like they probably won’t develop a love of cooking. But if you start the kids out cooking homemade cakes or homemade candy you can just about guarantee that the kids will love it, and want to do more.

Last night I did some great cooking with my kids who are 8 and 11, and I can’t still see their faces as they licked out the bowl. Kids love cooking something that is easy to cook and yummy to eat. Homemade candy is both easy to cook and yummy to eat.

And once they learn to cook some they’ll graduate from candy to bigger things, and they’ll have a skill for life.

There’s a few simple things to remember, whether they’re cooking homemade candy or anything else. Allow plenty of time, expect mess, start with a simple recipe and get them started on the simple tasks.

And of course you’ve got to keep them away from heat, so avoid candy, for example, that requires a syrup. Syrup is heated to a high temperature so kids shouldn’t be stirring it, for example. No syrup burns.

And another reason to stay away from syrups is that they are a little tricky to get right, you have to heat them to just the right temperature. There are some fantastic simple homemade candy recipes, so start with something like pralines or truffles.

But once you’re all up to skill there’s no end to the homemade candy recipes you can try. Truffles, nougats, chocolate anythings, toffees, the list goes on and on. Oh and if you try toffee make sure you do chewy toffee, it’s absolutely the best toffee ever.

Now all that has made me hungry.

Seriously though, teaching the kids to cook candy gets them on the road to cooking for life, and they learn to love to cook anything with time.

So find yourself some simple homemade candy recipes, there’s some on my website, and get the kids into the kitchen. As well as getting lots of homemade candy to eat, they’ll thank you for it in later years, just like I thank my mom for the same thing.