My seven year old is getting more and more ambitious in the kitchen. She always wants to help me prepare breakfast or dinner and often times I set up little jobs for her to help me with. She's becoming more confident in the kitchen and I'm loving it.

I knew it was time to start really encouraging her love for cooking and get her her own cookbook. American Girl has several new cookbooks that are perfect for the beginner, and more experienced little chefs.

A Smart Girl's Guide: Cooking // American Girl Baking // You're the Chef

Her first test recipe was Bitty Berry Pancakes from the You're the Chef cookbook. She made them for breakfast one weekend. She woke up wanting to cook and so we flipped through and picked a breakfast recipe that we could create with the ingredients we had on hand that morning. With a little help from us she created us a yummy breakfast.

She's not quite ready to take on the responsibility of making dinner on her own but wanted to pick a recipe she could make all by herself. We decided to set a night where she could make us a dessert.

She picked the Peachy Parfaits from the You're The Chef cookbook.

There isn't technically any cooking involved in this recipe which makes it a good little recipe for little chefs. She marinated her berries and peaches in a sugar and spice mixture and layered together her fruit and ice cream in our sundae dishes.

Peachy Parfaits

from You're the Chef American Girl Cookbook

Ingredients

• 2 cups sliced peaches (fresh or frozen)
• 2 cups raspberries
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 3 cups vanilla ice cream
• wafer cookies

Directions

1. Wash and cut the fruit. Remove any squishy raspberries and pick out any leaves. Wash the raspberries and let them drain well. Cut the fresh or thawed-from-frozen peaches into small chunks. (We omitted the last part)
2. Mix the fruit with spices. In a medium mixing bowl, gently stir together the raspberries, peaches, sugar and nutmeg. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Arrange the parfaits. Spoon some of the fruit mixture into the bottom of four parfait glasses. Top each with a large scoop of ice cream. Spoon the remaining fruit on top.
4. Add a cookie. Stick a cookie into each parfait. Serve right away.

This is not a sponsored post. We did receive samples for review. This post may contain affiliate links.