Baking Class: 50 Fun Recipes Kids Will Love to Bake! (Cooking Class)

Baking Class: 50 Fun Recipes Kids Will Love to Bake! (Cooking Class)

688 ratings 4.8 out of 5 stars

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Product Description Following the best-selling book Cooking Class, this delightful baking cookbook for children ages 8–12 features 50 easy-to-follow, kid-friendly recipes. Lively step-by-step photos teach bakers-in-training how to knead dough, make biscuits, decorate cookies, and produce a perfect pie, along with essential skills like following directions and accurately measuring ingredients. Kids will learn to make both sweet and savory treats and will use fresh fruits and vegetables in recipes such as Bursting with Blueberries Muffins, Zombie Zucchini Bread, and Peachy Keen Crumble. Bonus goodie bag stickers, pop-out gift tags, and bake sale signs encourage kids to share their homemade delights with pride. 2017 NPR's Best Books of the Year 2017 IACP Cookbook Award Winner 2017 National Parenting Product Awards Winner 2018 ​Mom's Choice Award Gold Winner 2019  New York Times "Best Cookbooks for Kids" Also available in this series: Cooking Class and Cooking Class Global Feast! Review “What do we like more than homemade goodies? When kids can make 'em themselves! The new book Baking Class helps them do just that with cute ideas and step-by-step how-tos perfect for any aspiring chef.” — FamilyFun “What's the phrase – kid-tested, mother-approved? Two years ago, my then-9-year-old worked her way through  Cooking Class, Deanna F. Cook's previous book, with little to no intervention from me. This year's charmer has been the same story. It's a teach-yourself-to-bake book with vast kid appeal, thanks to big step-by-step photos, clear instructions and adorable, easy recipes (cranberry orange scones, teeny tiny apple pies, sugar cookies, macaroons). At the back are stickers, labels and – be still my beating heart –  stencils so that you can sugar-powder your cookies into art.” — T. Susan Chang,  NPR's Best Books of 2017 "Spiral-bound, with glossy, easy-to-clean covers, these cookbooks are bright and colorful, with recipes that range in difficulty from very easy (mug cake, salad dressing) to more complicated (crepes, spring rolls). They are perfect for children who want a thorough introduction to the kitchen, including basic rules for safety, vocabulary, setting a table and — you’re going to love this, parents — cleaning up. They are written for children ages 8 to 12, but again, younger ones will find something for them here, too." —  New York Times “Roll up your sleeves and get out the oven mitts for Baking Class: 50 Fun Recipes Kids Will Love to Bake! This colorful, spiral-bound guide, presented by the aptly named kids' cookbook writer Deanna F. Cook, features easy instructions paired with helpful pictures. There are eye-catching recipes for crispy cheese squares (think Cheez-Its) and brownie pizza, plus adorable bread art (bake an octopus or a snail) and cake and cookie decorating ideas, all rated for difficulty using a scale of one to three rolling pins. Who knew you could put designs and initials on toast using foil shields? A section on the basics gets young bakers started, and additional bonuses include stickers, bake-sale tags and design stencils to use with confectioner's sugar.” — BookPage “This colorful baking guide offers detailed illustrated directions to help kids make a wide range of baked goods, including muffins, breads, cookies, scones, biscuits, pies, cakes, and cupcakes. Color photos accompany each step of every recipe, as well as several pages of baking basics that introduce common cooking terms, safety tips, and tools. The recipes are rated with one, two, or three rolling pins to indicate their level of difficulty. Along with the 50 recipes, the book features sidebars and extra pages of cooking tips and variations. For example, the recipe for “Silly Sticks” includes a sidebar that describes five other easy ways to use puff pastry, and the “Sweet and Simple Sugar Cookie” recipe is followed by four pages of decorating ideas and tips. While most of the recipes require the use of an oven, a few, such as “A Toast to You,” can be made in a toaster oven, or in the case of the flour-free “Cocoa Cake in a Mug,” even the microwave. The book also includes a table of contents and an index for handy reference. VERDICT This attractive and well-organized baking guide for kids will make a nice addition to most nonfiction collections, and a good gift for young baking enthusiasts.” — School Library Journal “Highly visual, photographing each step along the way to creating crispy cheese squares and “dig in the dirt” pie (chocolate ice cream topped with cookie crumbs, painted candy ladybugs, and gummy worms, and frozen overnight).” — Publishers Weekly “Crammed full of joy and fun, this cookbook teaches kids baking fundamentals while they whip up their favorite treats. The only way this book could be better is if it did the cleanup, too!” — Stacie Billis, author of One Hungry Mama and Make It Easy “Here’s a book for kids to sink their teeth into! They’ll build confidence in the kitchen while turning out wholesome and delicious baked goods.” — Jenna Helwig, food editor at Parents magazine and author of Smoothie-licious From the Inside Flap Bake Up Some Kitchen Fun! Learn to make your favorite baked goods for every meal of the day - and plenty of great snacks, too. Bonus features include cookie-cutting templates & decorative stencils, gift tags and labels, toothpick flags & cupcake toppers, bake sale price cards, and lots of fun stickers! From the Back Cover Bake Up Some Kitchen Fun! Learn to make your favorite baked goods for every meal of the day – and plenty of great snacks, too. Bonus features include cookie-cutting templates & decorative stencils, gift tags and labels, toothpick flags & cupcake toppers, bake sale price cards, and lots of fun stickers! About the Author Deanna F. Cook is the award-winning author of several books for kids, including Food Faces and the best-selling Baking Class, Cooking Class, and Cooking Class Global Feast! She served as the creative development director at FamilyFun magazine and has been an editor at Scholastic, Disney, and Kidstir.com. She lives in western Massachusetts and can be found online at deannafcook.com.

I had parents that both worked, so I grew up on fast food and microwave meals, so I knew nothing of cooking or baking . My husband on the other hand grew up on home cooked - nearly gourmet- meals, and has been my cooking instructor for the last 8 years. I can cook and bake a wide variety of things now, but I wouldn't call myself master yet. Our eldest, 8, is learning to cook. I am reviewing this book based off of the mind set of someone learning to or new to cooking, like I was a few years ago.I read negative reviews first before I purchase anything, because, those are the most brutally honest about products and I count myself lucky if the negative reviews do not affect my product.That said, I do agree that the spiral spine of this book is not the greatest. If the book should be dropped, the books spine will come undone and have issues, needing to be fixed. That is the only reason I docked a star.I didn't count all the pages of the cookbook yet, but it seems to me they are all there when thumbing through the book.I am annoyed at the reviewers who claimed that the majority of the recipes are "how to decorate toast to look cute". Yes, there are a handful of pages like that, but they are added suggestions, like the page that shows you how to make a dip, than other add on's to try to change the flavor of the dip. I find those pages to be helpful for a new baker to get inspiration.Most of the pages of this book are actual recipes with photos of children making said recipes. The photo results are always a child's cooking results. No, not all the steps are always included, but by the time you get to certain steps, it is assumed you read the cooking lingo part of the book or a previous recipe to already have an idea how to do certain tasks.I will also add that while most of the recipes could easily be explained in a few sentences, each one takes about 2 pages. One page with ingredients, than one page with photos and steps on how to do it. This is very helpful for new bakers. This is why there are only 50 or so recopies for such a large book.I agree that the pictures of finished products do not look cute or fancy. From my new cook perspective, I would get really annoyed at cookbooks with 5 star perfect pictures of cookies and cakes, than look at my results that look like my food got in a back ally fight with a blender and the result was mush. You cant compare when learning, otherwise you get frustrated and quit before you perfect it. I love that the photos look like an 6 year old cooked the item, because when my daughter cooks, hers will look just like that, and she would know she did it right!I also agree that some of the recipes looked bland. They are basic recipes. if you want something to taste amazing, go find different variations of the recipe. This book shows them BASIC techniques and BASIC recipes. Everyone's taste is different. Something that tastes good to you could be gross for someone else. I personally think this book will be used for the first year or so of my kid cooking, than doomed to sit on a shelf until my next kid learns to cook, etc.With that in mind, What I AM doing in addition, is giving my daughter her own cute blank binder/ cook book to fill with recipes that will taste amazing and she will make for life. But, that process I imagine will be something like this: She makes scones from this cook book 2 or 3 times, learns terms like "cutting" in butter and other techniques, than we say "Okay, now you know the process, lets find a recipe we like better and add it to your cook book binder". That is how any of us learn anything.I know that out of all the many cook books I have, I only actually have maybe 4 or 5 recipes from each that make it into my cookbook binder for regular rotation and to be passed on to future generations.I do love that there are little stickers and stencils (for powder sugar dusting treats) in the back of book. This will encourage her to make goodies as gifts for loved ones.I do plan on cooking with my daughter, step by step, until she masters each of her chosen recipes. I also plan on letting her operate the blender and turn on the oven, etc. You need to keep in mind that now a days everyone is sue happy, so authors have to put "with a parents help" on everything so they can cover their bums if something happens. My answer, to this is to show my kids how to do it it, than when they ask for help (because the book says to have a parent do it) say "You can do it, honey. I trust you." Encourage your kids to be self reliant, but don't give them tasks that are out of their ability,Overall, I love this book. If the spiral bound spine were of a thicker gage material, I would have given it 5 stars. I expect this book may be dropped a bit in the future (it's what to expect with kids) and may need me to repair it a few times.I think this is the PERFECT book for new and beginning cooks. I think that its colors and details and photos are fun for kids. I love that the from the of the book is filled with cooking lingo such as "folding" and "cutting in reference to dough", that I know I had zero clue about until a few years ago. I love that this book encourages your children to have bake sales and gift treats. I love that it gives them realistic goals to achieve as they learn. I love that it teaches them to have fun decorating and experimenting with flavor ideas.I also think that this cook book could benefit many adults I know. We are all raised on some sort of "convince cooking" and have been brainwashed into thinking that store bought pancake mix is where pancakes always come from and we can't do it ourselves (I run into this a lot).The contents of this book itself I give 5 stars. I am pleased with this purchase and can't wait to give this, as well as our homemade binder cook book, to my daughter, to teach her to be self reliant and confident in the kitchen.