Playful Plates is a children's cooking book written by Michelin-trained private chef Alan Dawes and his four-year-old daughter Violet. It is not a book about raising the next MasterChef. It is a book about what happens when you stop treating the kitchen as somewhere kids do not belong and start letting them in.
Alan has cooked at the highest level for more than two decades, training under Marco Pierre White, working with Spicers Retreats in Australia, and building a career as one of the country's most awarded private chefs. His cookbook Discovery is stocked in over 40,000 stores worldwide. But none of that prepared him for what he learned cooking with Violet.
She was barely tall enough to see over the bench when she decided she lived in the kitchen. She never waited for an invitation. She just showed up, wanted to help, and once she figured out what she was doing, there was no getting her out. What started as time together quickly became something Alan did not expect. Violet was picking up skills without realising it. Not just cooking skills. Maths, colours, measurements, focus, confidence, and the kind of quiet pride that comes from finishing something real.
Playful Plates is built around ten simple recipes that Alan and Violet cook together at home. Chocolate chip cookies. Mini pizzas. Pancakes with Biscoff and fresh mint. Fruit kebabs with a yoghurt dip. Cheesy quesadillas made in the air fryer. Rainbow smoothies layered by colour. Each recipe is written so that children can genuinely take part, not just watch from the side, but stir, measure, shape, pour, and build something they can be proud of.
Each recipe comes with the story behind it, an explanation of what kids are really learning while they cook, suggestions to make it more fun, and notes on how to adapt it to whatever you have in the kitchen. Nothing in this book requires fancy equipment or hard-to-find ingredients. It is everyday food made with two pairs of hands.
There is also a full section on what cooking does for child development, written honestly rather than clinically. Cooking together builds fine motor skills, teaches maths through measuring, develops focus through following steps, and gives children something that worksheets and screens cannot: the experience of making something real from scratch and putting it on the table for the people they love.
Violet's voice runs through the whole book. Her perspective on the recipes, on cooking with her dad, and on why chocolate chips should always be more than the recipe says is exactly what makes Playful Plates different from every other children's cookbook. This is not a polished, perfect book about cooking. It is an honest, funny, and genuinely useful book about time.
Every dollar from the sale of this book goes directly toward Violet's future. Alan was very clear about that when he decided to write it. That is why it exists.
Get your kids into the kitchen. Let it get messy. Make something together. If there is flour on the floor and a smile on their face, you are doing it right.
