Baking with Kids

Last week I baked a gluten-free lemon chiffon cake for the Baking with Julia challenge. Turns out, this is a great recipe to bake with kids.

What I love about baking is it’s a great activity to do with kids because it teaches them math, patience and teamwork. Gluten-free baking takes a little extra prep time on your part in terms of mixing the flours but once you’ve got that down to a science, you’ll find the workflow takes care of itself.

Here are my tips for seamlessly baking with kids:

• Mix your dry ingredients ahead of time. Grab your scale, your flours, your starches and a sealable container, and weigh and mix. Especially if you’re just starting to bake gluten-free or use a scale, you’ll find having little ones around is a bit distracting (did I get exactly 10.25 ounces of sugar into the bowl?). I’ll do this in the morning or whenever I have 10 minutes to spare.
• Prepare your wet ingredients. About an hour before the kids come home, separate your eggs, measure your water and your oil, drag out the measuring spoons for the lemon extract – then place everything onto a single baking sheet. Kids are visual creatures and are used to viewing lessons as a contained unit.
• Think like a cooking teacher. Have multiples of everything: whisks, aprons, measuring spoons and cups.
• Plot out the recipe steps per child. I had the six-year-old and eight-year-old whisking the designated wet ingredients into the dry ingredients – working together over a large bowl, they each had a whisk and therefore, equal time at the counter. Meanwhile the 10-year-old worked the stand mixer beating the egg whites.
• Plan activities for baking time. An hour in the oven is like three kid hours, at least. The girls did their homework, played cards and built a massive tower out of plastic cups kept just for that occasion. By the end of playtime, they were ready for their treat!