cooking with toddlers: baked holiday tortilla chips

When Ethan was finally starting to feel better, he began readily asking for snacks again. And everything had to, of course, be holiday themed because I dug my own hole by doing this for Halloween. Now that Target is no longer "the Halloween store" and is now "the Hanukkah and Christmas store," he's slowly converted himself from skulls to snowmen. Which is great, save for the fact with him being sick, we have no food in the house. And I've hardly had time to wash my face, let alone prepare the Christmas and Hanukkah magic he's already requesting. We had some cookie cutters and a package of gluten free corn tortillas, so on a whim we decided to make baked tortilla chips.

All you need are corn tortillas, olive oil and some sea salt and black pepper (if you want). And, of course, holiday cookie cutters of which I have slim pickings. I had a dreidel, a Menorah, a mitten and something that is either a kid or a Gingerbread Man (we went with the latter). This could probably be cuter if you planned your shapes better. Regardless, Ethan loved using the cookie cutters to cut out the shapes.

Once your shapes are cut out, you just use a basting brush to brush on a little olive oil.

Once they're ready to go, pop them into an oven preheated at 350 degrees and bake for 10 minutes.

They come out crispy and cute! And perfect with guac, Ethan thought, though of course we had none. The one thing I would do differently next time is adjust bake times for bigger shapes (the mittens) versus smaller ones (the dreidels) because the smaller ones got a little crispier, but they were still the perfect snack -- and, best yet, something little chefs can do mostly on their own with a little supervision. Minus the oven part. That part is all mommy.