Mexican Horchata recipe: easy to make with children

Welcome to “Around The World in 12 Dishes”. We will be taking you on a journey around the world, (loosely) following in Phileas Fogg’s footsteps, exploring 12 different countries with our children, by cooking 12 dishes with them. One for each country visited.

The world is such a wonderfully diverse and colorful place. Our children see maps, flags and books. They see postcards and maybe they see films about the world.. but let’s really bring it to life through food! Taste and smell don’t often get explored, we think this would be wonderfully fun and interesting for you and your children.

Not only is it an exciting and different way to learn about cultures, but cooking with children brings a host of benefits – from numeracy to science. How can you beat that?

Adventures In Mommydom, Creative Family Fun, Domestic Goddesque, Glittering Muffins, Here Come The Girls, Juggling with Kids, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Mermaids’ Makings, Montessori Tidbits, Mummymummymum and The Educators’ Spin On It have come together to help you on your food journey and will each cook a dish with our children and post about it – to help inspire you to have a go! Then go out there, cook, blog, and join in the linky fun! Check out the other great posts as well!

Around the World in 12 Dishes

We had started our journey the same way Phileas Fogg did in London, UK, and Stockholm, Sweden, then continued on to Moscow in Russia and via Indian New Delhi reached Tokyo in Japan. After making a stop in the exotic location of Papeete, capital of French Polynesia, we have now reached Mexico City!

March 4 – First country was the UK
April 1 – The second country was Sweden
May 6 – The third country was Russia
June 3 – The fourth country was India
July 7 – The fifth country was Japan
August 5 – The sixth country was Australia
September 2 – The seventh country was French Polynesia
October 7 – The eighth country is Mexico!

How to join the fun!

The only mandatory part is the dish, the rest is all up to you, we just thought it would be fun and more concrete to the kids as to why we are making a unusual dish.
Cook a dish from Mexico: The goal is to explore this country through FOOD and activities if you wish. Make a typical dish (sweet or savoury) from the country with the kids, take photos and have fun!
Typical dishes: Tacos, Enchiladas, Quesadillas and more.
Print your passport: Click here to download, comes with space for a photo of the child with the dish. Here is a little cover for it if you wish 🙂
Color a placemat: Once colored/painted or whatever other way you want to do this, you can laminate it or put it between clear contact paper to use it over and over. Great conversation piece for you and your kids. Click here to download it.
Make a craft: you can make a country related craft with the kids [optional!]

Fun fact: The Chihuahua is the world’s smallest dog and is named for a Mexican state.
Share with us: Our Mexico challenge starts on October 7th and will remain open for a year, so attach a link to your blog to enter the linky party or go to the comment section and post a photo together with what you did together with your child(ren).
Pinterest: We will add your photos to a “Around the World in 12 Dishes” Pinterest Boards (one for the dishes, one for the crafts) you will be a great source of inspiration for everyone 🙂
Are you a blogger? Let your fans know about the challenge and grab our cute lil’ button to share it on your blog.

Please check out our partner blogs and their Mexico ideas: Adventures In Mommydom, Creative Family Fun, Domestic Goddesque, Glittering Muffins, Here Come The Girls, Juggling with Kids, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Mermaids’ Makings, Montessori Tidbits, Mummymummymum and The Educators’ Spin On It

If you do this, we’d LOVE to see a photo of it. Email it to us or post it on our Facebook page. We’d love to do a Facebook album, a Pinterest board and a page of your creations 🙂

Please link up your Mexican dish and/or craft in our linky below, we would love to see it!

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Anyhow, I knew exactly what we would make when we landed in Mexico. A few weeks ago we were in Arizona. Not only is it an awesome state to spend time in, it is very close to the Mexican border and, as such, the food is heavily influenced by Mexico. Whilst we were there we were introduced to a drink called Horchata, which The Girls and I thoroughly enjoyed.

It’s a milk-based, cinnamon-flavoured drink– I believe you can add rum to it to make it more appealing to the adult palette. But it’s a perfect ‘dish’ for children to make because it involves no cooking. Huzzah!

Naturally I googled the recipe and, after vetoing anything that involved grinding nuts, I fell across this recipe and this is the one that we followed loosely.

The rice milk I used was fairly sweet so we didn’t bother with sugar. Dimples enjoyed scooping the rice and then whizzing it up in the blender.

After we added the liquid, the ‘stick’ and the lid, we left it overnight.

Once it had a ‘good night’s sleep’, we had to strain the liquid and dispose of the rice (incidentally this made an excellent sensory experience afterwards.)

Then it was simple case of adding lots of ice and cinnamon and testing.

Unsurprisingly- for me at least- having made it, the Girls eschewed the drink in favour of apple juice. I can’t say that DH was overly sold either. I imagine that, were the weather less inclement, I could get used to drinking it though.