Baking with Kids: Make Breads, Muffins, Cookies, Pies, Pizza Dough, and More!

by Leah Brooks

Get ready to measure, mix, and decorate! Baking with Kids is just the book you need to help teach children to bake. Show your children how to safely use basic equipment in the kitchen and explain all about the important ingredients they'll need to make the most delicious baked goods. Recipes include muffins, scones, breads, pretzels, crackers, pizza dough, pie crust, cake, cookies, cupcakes, and more! Celebrated chef and instructor, Leah Brooks creates activities with simple step-by-step photo illustrations that will guide kids through each recipe and inspire creativity throughout. Put on your aprons--it's time to get baking!

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction

415 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2014

About the author

Leah Brooks is the founder of Young Urban Modern Chefs (Y.U.M. Chefs), a San Francisco cooking school for kids. Y.U.M. Chefs holds classes, summer camps, and birthday parties for hundreds of children a year in its kitchen/classroom in the Mission District. Their focus is on changing the way kids see food, making it approachable, healthy, and fun. They also emphasize seasonality, and have a well-used classroom garden to teach growing and harvesting fresh vegetables. They’re also a staple at the Noe Valley Farmers Market, where they do community outreach and hold a monthly class. They are a project of Open Mind, a non-profit dedicated to the development and education of children.

Leah Brooks grew up in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, where she began her culinary career. She graduated from the Art Institute of Seattle’s culinary program and worked under two of Seattle’s James Beard Award winning chefs for seven years. Leah currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she shares her passion for local fresh foods with young people in her celebrated hands-on cooking classes at Young Urban Modern Chefs (Y.U.M. Chefs). Leah’s work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal as well as on local Bay Area parent resource websites.

Reviews

[Laura Piercy · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are new to baking - or even if you are experienced - this book is a great tool with lots of tips and tricks to ease kids into the wonderful world of baking. The author's spin on making treats more nutritious, such as using white whole wheat flour, appeals to me. I also love that she includes a section on kitchen safety in the beginning; it is a helpful reference, especially coming from a source who knows what to anticipate from working with kids in the kitchen on a daily basis.

While flipping through the cookbook for the first time, I salivated at every recipe while trying to figure out what we'd make first! So far we have tried the Roasted Strawberry Muffins, Blueberry Muffins, Apple Pie Scones and the Good-For-You Graham Crackers. ALL were delicious, but let me just say that the homemade graham crackers are simply AMAZING. I had never even thought to make them from scratch before now!

My son is only 15 months old so I can't say much about the practical application of baking with kids, but I will say that he loved eating the finished products as well as the ingredients as "we" were making them ;)

YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED with this book! There are so many wholesome baked goods and snacks, especially when compared to all the processed pre-packaged foods you can buy in the store. The author even includes some cooking-themed party ideas at the end. Can't wait to try them when my baby is older!

[Deanna Harding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author was very clear with directions. Once I started reading this cookbook, however, I realized it would not suit my objectives. I was looking more for a children's cookbook for a 3 year old. I did learn a few helpful tips, and could see where this book would be helpful when working with older children.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

This cookbook has wonderful photos of children from a variety of ethnic backgrounds doing the prep, baking, and decorating with adults. My daughter and I both loved looking through this book and choosing recipes. The recipes are slightly unusual without alienating kids - for example, I can't wait to make the roasted strawberry muffins, which I think my whole family will like, and I appreciate that the muffin section isn't full of the usual banana or blueberry muffin recipes. There are also recipes for pretzels, crackers, cupcakes, cookies and many other fun baked goods. I eat gluten-free but I think most of these recipes can easily be adapted with a 1:1 gluten free flour blend. There are also easy tips throughout entitled "for smaller hands," which is just what it sounds like - ideas for which parts of the recipes kids can help with and which parts an adult should handle. If I have one complaint about this book, it is that I wish there were more recipes included, but it's a fun book that will get a lot of use by kids and adults alike.

[Mariví · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book for all parents with kids ages 3-12. It is thoughtfully laid out and really well organized, with clear instructions and good recipes written in a way that makes tackling them seem doable for parents with young children. I've been cooking with my almost 4 year old for about 2 years and he knows a lot, but it's getting to the point where he needs to transition to measuring all on his own and doing as much cutting as possible on his own, and this book has broken everything down so that I know how to guide him. For example, I learned how to teach him to hold a butter knife, that bench scrapers are a good cutting tool for preschoolers, and when to transition him to other knives. I found the tips on cleaning as you go really useful as well; I realize now that cleanup skills are as necessary as cooking and baking skills. The recipes are a good mix of healthy seasonal snacks and fun desserts. At the end are three ideas for cooking-themed parties that I'll use to help guide his preschool class in our first group cooking lesson. An excellent book all around.