New Yorkers head to Tarrytown, NY this weekend for the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture's sixth annual Harvest Fest. With live music, cooking and gardening workshops, an extended farmer's market, hayrides and a seasonal pie bake-off, there is something for every member of your foodie-brood.

I’ve never thought of my automotive engineer brother-in-law as a particularly sentimental guy (sorry, Jason), but after seeing the birthday cake he just made for my sister Heather, I’m reconsidering. He enlisted the help of their daughters, Addison, 4, and Blair, 2, to construct an ice-cream-and-chocolate-and-peanut-butter concoction inspired by his love of Cold Stone Creamery ice cream cakes and Heather’s love of all things peanut butter and chocolate.

Here’s how he made it:
He started with a layer of crushed Oreos topped with fudge. Next, he added alternating layers of ice cream--which he froze individually in pie pans lined with plastic wrap so he could get them out (again, he’s an engineer)--and brownies, which were also baked in pie pans. Jason then covered the cake it with chocolate frosting and topped with crushed peanut butter cups. (Quote Heather: “SO FLIPPIN' GOOD!”)

Here’s how he pulled it off:
To distract my sister, Jason called over some neighbors and had Addison take her upstairs while he got the cake together. According to Heather, “The best part is that Jason videotaped each step of the process--so adorable to watch the girls crushing Oreo cookies with their plastic Home Depot hammers, unwrapping peanut butter cups and eating them, melting butter, etc. It definitely was a long process, but so worth it. I had the easy job ... eating it!"

If you live with foodies-in-training, check out What’s On Your Plate?, a documentary that follows two 11-year-old girls from Manhattan who go to the country, enjoy farm-fresh foods, and return to the city inspired to find out how their food is produced--and how it gets all the way to our restaurants, cafeterias, and kitchen tables. During the course of their journey, the girls interviewed farmers, activists, shopkeepers, friends, and family members about what they like to eat and why. Check out the trailer—it has us very excited to see the film!

What's on Your Plate? is currently screening at select theaters across the country and will be hopefully be available for rent or purchase in the next year.

Ron and Colleen Suhanosky, parents of three and owners of NYC's acclaimed Sfoglia restaurant swear by this cheesy, savory, kid-pleasing pasta recipe: They even put it in their new cookbook, Pasta Sfoglia, due out this month.

Serves 4 to 6

1 pound good-quality fusilli
2 tablespoons grapeseed oil
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
2 1-pound-12-ounce cans peeled whole San Marzano tomatoes
15 large fresh basil leaves, julienned
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pound whole milk mozzarella di bufala, cut into ¿-inch pieces
Grated Parmesan cheese, optional garnish

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the fusilli to the boiling water and cook according to the package directions.

2. Add the grapeseed oil and garlic to a 10-inch skillet. Turn on the heat to high. When the edges of the garlic have turned golden, about 1 minute, use your hands to break up and squeeze the tomatoes directly into the skillet. Immediately add the basil, salt, and pepper. Bring the sauce to a boil, then lower the heat to medium.

3. When the pasta is cooked, turn off the heat under the sauce. Evenly distribute the mozzarella into the sauce. Use a wire-mesh skimmer to remove the pasta from the pot and place it directly into the skillet. Fold the fusilli into the sauce. Continue to fold until the mozzarella has melted and attached itself to the fusilli.

4. Serve immediately with grated Parmesan cheese, if desired.

Go buffet-style. Lori Slater, a mother of four and the founder of eco-apparel company In2green, puts an array of lunch fixings out on the counter and lets her kids pick and pack.

Kelsey Banfield, blogger of the popular Naptime Chef, shares her favorite tricks of the brown-bagging trade:
 

To keep things interesting, I’ve started changing up the shape of my daughter's sandwiches and fruits by cutting them with my favorite new kitchen tool, the Lunch Punch. These awesome sandwich cutters come in cool shapes, like puzzle pieces and various animals. They also can be used for shaping grilled cheeses, cookies, Jello, and practically anything else you can imagine. No matter the variety of sandwich I make (her current favorite is ham and cheese), my daughter loves assembling the puzzle I pack for her. Then she eats the pieces one by one. She also enjoys playing with the animal shapes and giving them names.

If you can’t find the Lunch Punch nearby, you can easily use a regular sturdy cookie cutter instead. Once I even used her Lunch Punch to “shape” a pile of sticky rice. She loved it and ate every last grain. While I’m not one to sneak food into her diet, I don’t mind making her meals more fun. I’ll even admit that I enjoy it, too.

The Naptime Chef’s Favorite Sandwich Combinations (always served on whole-wheat bread):

Peanut butter with apricot jelly
Grape jelly with cream cheese
Sliced ham with swiss and honey mustard
Sliced avocado with swiss
Peanut butter with nutella (for a treat!)

Sweet crab makes a perfect centerpiece for a summer meal, and any kid loves a little fried nugget with dipping sauce on the side. Chefs Mark Gaier and Clark Frasier of Summer Winter in Burlington, Massachusetts, recommend these easy crab cakes.

 
For the crab cakes:
 
4 ounces crab meat 
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons all-purpose flour, plus flour for dredging
1 teaspoon butter
1 teaspoon yellow onions, chopped
1/2 cup bread crumbs 
1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil

1. Mix the crab meat, lemon juice, sour cream, and flour to combine in medium bowl.
2. Melt the butter in saute pan and cook onions over medium heat until soft. Add the bread crumbs and continue to cook for one minute. Set aside and cool.
3. Combine the onion mixture with the crab mixture. Season with salt and mix thoroughly.
4. Portion the mixture into two cakes and dredge them in flour.
5. Heat oil over medium-high heat and fry the cakes for three minutes on each side until golden brown.


For the remoulade:

1/4 cup sweet gherkin pickles
1/4 cup red onion
1 3/4 cups mayonnaise
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1 tablespoon champagne vinegar
1 3/4 teaspoon sambal
1 1/4 teaspoon sweet paprika
Salt and pepper to taste

1.  Finely chop the pickles and onion.
2.  In a bowl, combine the pickles and onion with the rest of the ingredients and mix until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. (If you're in a hurry, mayo mixed with the grainy mustard is delicious on its own!)
 
 

A couple of weeks ago, during that all-too-brief patch of glorious summer weather, some friends invited us to their place for dinner alfresco. We'd been to the fish shop and brought along our catch: a dozen jumbo Mexican shrimp. The barbecue was already going, so we mixed up some minced garlic and chopped parsley, split each of the colossal crustaceans and stuffed them with the mix, squirted the lot with lemon juice, and gave them a turn on the grill. The result: summer perfection.

Kids may not need another reason to love their sweets, but we are stocking up on these supercute cupcake toppers (thanks for the tip, Bakerella!) so the little desserts, be they Duncan Heinz (likely) or made from scratch, can look even more irresistible.

During these last days of summer, I like to feed my family as much fresh corn as is humanly possible. Lucky for me, they love corn. So I steam it, saute it (with shredded zucchini in butter, finished only with salt, pepper, and lime juice--divine!) denude it for corn pancakes, and lastly, attempt to grill it. While on our family vacation, I set out to make my version of Mexican street corn: the delicious charred corn on the cob that is traditionally slathered with crema, chili powder, cotija cheese, and lime juice. What's great about this dish is that you can include the entire family in it's preparation ... whether they like it or not. And you can, of course, play with the ingredients.

Here's Conor, diligently submerging the corn in water pregrill. Is this step, which some cookbooks suggest doing, necessary? I don't really know. But the boy loved pushing those cobs down into the water. Here is my father-in-law, Joe, grilling the corn.

Actually, he was grilling the corn and cursing, because he thought my corn grilling instructions were completely bogus, which they probably were (the trick is to get the cob lightly charred without overcooking the kernels). But because he's nice to me, he did it what I asked and just cursed a little bit. Honestly, I think we could have just husked the darn things, coated the cobs in some olive oil, and put them directly on the grate, which is what I'll probably do the next time, to achieve a more authentic street-food feel. But sometimes, the fun is in the experimenting.

Once the corn is ready and while it's still hot, it's time to add the toppings. This step is the best part, and it's where your kids can come in very handy. In place of the traditional crema, I made a mixture of mayo and sour cream, and added a bit of chili sauce (Heinz makes a mild version, but you can also use Sriracha if your fam likes the heat) instead of using the chili powder or cayenne that some recipes call for in the mayo mixture. We then slathered the "cream" all over the grilled corn. Here's Belle getting her turn with the brush:

Once the corn was good and coated, we sprinkled it all over with grated pecorino (instead of the cojita, although feta would be fine too). And for the finale, a healthy squeeze of the lime juice.

It was messy, and it was good. Honestly, I think the corn prepared like this is a meal in itself. And lucky for all of us, we still have a few weeks left to enjoy it right from the cob.