Baking with Kids

I was thinking about the whole idea of baking cookies today.  Tonight was the first time I've ever actually baked cookies with my kids.  I mean, I've baked cookies for them before with my daughter sitting over me, asking what she could do, but losing interest when it came to something she was actually able to do herself, but I've never actually done it with my kids!  It's actually shocking that this huge part of my own childhood has somehow been forgotten!

Tonight we were doing something special.  We were making cookies for Santa (and yes, I'm writing this on Christmas Eve to post later!) and I promised we would do it as a family.  I did all the measuring and egg cracking, but we all had to take part somehow.  My daughter mixed one batch of cookie dough all by herself after I showed her the way I found that worked best.  It was kind of cute to watch her sitting there and doing it exactly as I told her, words and all ("stir, 2, 3, 4, scoop, 2, 3, 4").  Then with the batch of ginger snaps we all took part in it to mix it together.  I had to help my older son because the dough was just too hard for him to stir.  Even my partner took a turn at mixing it!  We sat around the counter and I handed out cookie dough and everyone rolled a few cookies up to put on the sheet.  All together we pressed them flat.  The only one that wasn't involved was the baby.  I was tempted to help him mix it like I had with his brother, but my partner pointed out that he'd just try to eat it, and we agreed that would be nothing but messy!  I thought the same about using his hand to press a cookie flat, but had visions of him grabbing it off the cookie sheet and eating it!  We thought better of it and he just got one when it was finished.

I think that's the first family activity we've done in a while!  My older son decided rather than rolling the dough, he'd just eat it, which made us all laugh.  We all shared soda for once, even though I really don't like drinking Coke, but it was a special occasion.  Normally we plan ahead and get sparkling cider or grape juice for the occasion, but we didn't plan ahead this year.  We had a little toast to Christmas and all in all it was a pretty good time, something we definitely have to do more often.

This year I cheated.  One day I'll have a recipe book with cookies in it, but for the time being, we're using those box mixes.  It's not the greatest of ways to do it, and I know I could always look up a recipe online, but it was an impulse buy at the store.  I hadn't decided we were making our own cookies until I was at the store thinking about my daughter's sadness at not getting any of the brownies my room mate's friend made while she was visiting.  I felt really bad about it, so I was going to get brownie mix, but the cookies seemed like so much of a better choice.

When I was a kid we made cookies quite a bit.  It seemed like making cookies was part of every holiday season, be it Halloween, Easter, or Christmas.  I think I even remember making them for valentine's one year.  We made everything from sugar cookies to Toll House to ginger bread men.  We had cookie cutters for every occasion you could think of, and probably a few you haven't!  It was a huge part of my childhood, something I really wish I'd carried on with my own kids before now.

Of course, I know why I've got this inclination to have my kids sit by while I'm doing all the work.  That's pretty much how I remember it being when I was a kid.  My mom would mix the dough and roll it out.  All we got to do was cut out the cookies and decorate them.  I don't even remember getting to help with putting regular cookies out on the cookie sheet.  As a result, I think I've got this thought in my mind of doing all the work myself because I know I'll do it right and the kids, well, not so much.

However, I do want them to learn how to do it, and with good reason.  I think about my older two's father's story of making Toll House cookies when he was a kid.  He didn't realize that you had to mix the ingredients a certain way, so he just threw it all together and mixed it up.  The cookies were horrible, almost inedible!  I don't want my kids to go through a situation like that.  It must have been so disheartening for him, even though it was a learning experience, I'm sure!  I just want their learning experiences to be more positive than that.

Again, thinking back to my childhood, I remember reading the Pee Wee Scouts books when I was little.  There was one of them, I think it was Cookies and Crutches, that they decided they were going to make cookies, but it all went wrong.  They didn't have any baking soda, so they decided to use regular soda instead.  Their soda of choice was root beer.  The cookies turned out to be a disaster, but it's one more thing to add to my list of cookies and kids!  Maybe I'll pick up that book for my daughter.  I think she'd like it.

While baking may not be a necessary life skill, cooking kind of is unless you plan on eating nothing but box dinners for the rest of your life.  It's a skill I never learned when I was younger, so I struggle with it now.  Baking and cooking are two very different arts, but I do feel that you can learn some of the fundamentals of cooking just as well from baking.  There's the same basic concepts of measuring and blending.  For me, it's almost like a less advanced version of cooking.  Better yet, it's easier for kids because it doesn't mean standing over a hot oven.  With help from the parents, the tray goes in.  With help from the parents it comes back out.  Everything else can be done perfectly well by a kid all by themselves.  Perhaps we'll graduate to cooking after we've gotten a little more baking time in, at least for my daughter.  She's seven and old enough that she can pretty well make her way around a kitchen.  She may be too young for any serious cooking, but she can at least learn to do some basic stuff.  I think she'd enjoy it too!  She's been asking to help me out in the kitchen for as long as I can remember!

I think I've found one more thing to add to my list of things I need to do in the new year.  I need to spend more time baking with my kids.  Maybe it won't just be cooking.  Maybe we can pick up a book with some fantastic desserts or breads.  There's even the possibility of graduating to a colonial cookbook.  Wouldn't that be an excellent way to bring homeschooling into the kitchen?  I'm really starting to look forward to sharing more of my cooking time in the kitchen with my kids!