Cooking Class Guide & Recipes : Pancakes, Pizza, Tacos, Ziti, Cupcakes & more!!

Using my 10 years of experience teaching a summer cooking class for kids aged 5-15, I have put together this guide and recipe book. Since I spend the rest of the year teaching art, many aspects of teaching cooking came naturally as it involves a lot of procedural instruction (and a lot of clean up!), but there were also many things I had to learn through experience. This guide and recipe book will hopefully take some of the guesswork out of it for my fellow teachers!

When I first started teaching cooking to kids, many recipe books I had turned to for help contained only basic, no-heat required recipes that more-or-less just involved assembling ingredients (think Ants on a Log and faces made of fruit); they didn't teach about important cooking techniques, measuring ingredients, or kitchen safety. The recipes you will find in this package will require adult supervision, but they will also give students real-life cooking skills and expose them to foods and flavors they may not have encountered before.

The guide portion of this package contains notes about the recipes, procedures for directing a cooking class, a list of tips (such as what to have the kids do while the food is cooking, what to do about finicky eaters... things I wish I had known my first time around), and list of suggested equipment.

The recipe book itself contains more than 30 recipes for different meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and snacks included. All of the recipes can be put together in 1 hour or less. Many of the recipes are single serving which gives the students independence, control of their outcome, and cuts back on germs. Some examples of recipes you will find are: Pancakes for One, English Muffin Pizza with Homemade Sauce, Taco Sticks, Cookies for Two, and Soft Pretzels. The recipes are in full color with kid-friendly language. I have also included a mini version which prints tiled and gives you 4-copies per page.

I hope you find this to be a helpful resource when teaching cooking to kids!