BACK TO BASICS 2010 Part 2: Kids and Baking
After last month's article about kids and cooking, you're probably wondering what's so different about baking that it deserves its own separate article.
There are two facets of baking that make it an important skill to have. First, knowing how to bake will help you make money when you need it without having to get a job.
Fresh homemade baked goods are best sellers at farmers markets, church sales and even via word of mouth. Grocery stores try to imitate fresh baked goods by using frozen dough and baking it in-store, but their products don't generally taste as good as they smell. However, homemade baked goods are the real deal, and people will pay for that.
Since the actual work can usually* be done at home, overhead is low and profits are easily achieved. This makes baking a very attractive proposition for kids who want to make some extra money (or adults between jobs, as so many are these days).
Are you wondering what it would be like to run a baking business from your home? A woman with a bread-baking business shares her secrets for the successful selling of baked goods here. She's a homeschool mom who found that selling baked goods became "a wonderful creative and social outlet" for her children and herself.
The other reason it's important to know how to bake is that it's a way to give your family healthy food without spending a lot of money. Take bread, for example. In the grocery store, good whole wheat bread without preservatives is quite expensive. Yet it's already lost vitamins and minerals in the time since the wheat it contains was ground. You can grind your own wheat and bake bread from it immediately afterwards, thus giving your family all the nutrients wheat provides.
Some people have special dietary needs, such as avoiding gluten because of celiac disease. By making your own gluten-free baked goods, you can save a lot of money, because gluten-free products in the store are quite expensive.
One more reason to make all kinds of baked goods at home is that most baked items found in grocery stores today contain high-fructose corn syrup, a product originally used to fatten cows for slaughter. You can imagine what it's doing to us! After watching the documentary "King Corn" recently, I was sure glad that we bake most of the goodies we eat......and we don't add corn syrup to any of them!
I realize that many moms are just too busy to bake. That's why it's worth the time it takes to teach your children how to bake. It's a useful skill for their future, no matter what the economy does, but it's also a skill that can help you right now. My girls are long-time bakers (my elder son preferred eating the results and my younger son is still in the beginning stages of learning to bake). So I speak from experience when I say there's nothing like being greeted by the smell of homemade cookies in the house when you come in the door.
But to get to the point where the kids do most of the baking, you have to put in some time and patience teaching them how to do it. Still, teaching kids to bake is a lot of fun. That first batch of cookies is always a big event, and baking cakes for birthdays is fun, too. After your kids become proficient at those recipes, you can move them up to the more challenging work of baking bread and rolls. Working with bread dough is as much fun for kids as playing with modeling clay, plus they can eat the results. Making animal-shaped baked goods like teddy bear biscuits, teddy bear bread and turtle bread teaches kids baking skills while they "play."
(Your children may have or want toy baking tools and the "Easy-Bake Oven." Here are some recipes for diminutive goodies you can use instead of the expensive and who-knows-how-old mixes sold for those ovens in toy stores.)
Kids who bake make real-life use of their math skills (especially fractions ) when doubling or reducing recipes and measuring ingredients. You can definitely count their baking adventures as part of their education! And who knows, they may grow up to have an interest in baking beyond just cooking for the family. That's what happened to my daughter: she's currently a culinary school student!
Below you'll find more helpful links about baking. Enjoy baking with your children, knowing you're giving them a skill they can use for life.
* Check your county or state's rules about homemade food for resale to be sure. In some cases, your kitchen will have to be inspected, or you'll need to use a local facility like this one.
Teddy Bear Biscuits
Teddy Bear Bread
Turtle Bread
Cookie Recipes for Kids
Easy Bake Oven Recipes
Baking as part of a Waldorf homeschool curriculum
Giant Valentine Cookie recipe
If you really want to start a baking business