“I was thrown into Christmas cooking very young,” recalls Louise Nason, left, founder of Melt chocolate shop. “One year, my mum hurt her back, so I had to keep going to her room for instructions on how to cook beef Wellington.”
Christmas is still a time when children gravitate inexorably towards the kitchen, but forget the cloying concoctions and “edible” decorations made of food colourings and sugar – Nason has developed three distinctly grown-up-tasting treats.
“My children love making chocolate granola,” she says. “They get to play with textures and use big wooden spoons and scales. It’s a tactile experience. And now they can make the chocolate ganache mixture by themselves, they feel very responsible.”
It may be fun, but don’t expect an instant transformation