Recipe for fun
Six young kids, bags of flour, mounds of sugar, and shakers full of sprinkles – recipe for disaster? Not if you’re having a baking party, which is what we did this past weekend. We called in Kelli Burton who runs Baking Bandits and she arrived with all the ingredients, showed the kids how to do it all, and then cleaned it all up at the end! That’s the part where parents let out a huge sigh of relief when I tell them about it.
Now it doesn’t take much convincing to get kids into a kitchen to make chocolatey cupcakes with sprinkles on top – the trick is to get them to measure, mix, pour, and bake – to actually learn something while having fun. And that’s what Kelli knows how to do. She gets them right in there so there’s a real sense of accomplishment when the oven timer goes and they pull out a tray of goodies.
It doesn’t hurt that each of the kids is given a cool chef’s hat and an apron; they all felt like chefs even before the baking began. Ella was particularly pleased that the hats were pink; her friend Torben, not so much. Actually, he did very well with a room full of girls. Whether you do a baking party as a birthday event, or take a class with other kids, it’s a great way for them to have fun, learn valuable skills, and get a bit messy.
