Kids Café Spices it up South of the Border Style

Who would have thought these 12 kids would dive right into tamale making like old pros?  Chicken tamales with roasted poblanos, no less. Well, okay, only two kids actually used the poblanos, but they all used chile powder (in varying amounts) and not one of them flinched when I told them we were wrapping the whole gooey mess in cornhusks. After they wrapped and tied the first one I thought they'd all lose interest and we'd have to move on to the next recipe, but surprisingly, most of them continued filling, wrapping, and tying until they'd completed at least three tamales. When they were all done we gathered them up and put them in the steamer to cook.

While they were cooking we enjoyed making, and drinking, Mexican hot chocolate spiced with cinnamon, vanilla, and a pinch of chile powder. Everyone liked it and a couple of them even said it was the best hot chocolate they'd ever had.

At the end of class we had a little extra time while we waited for the tamales to finish cooking, so we tried our hands at making cornhusk dolls. It was a first for me too, but I think we did a pretty good job!