Cooking lesson #1

The kids loved their first cooking class today! We started out learning about kitchen safety, which was a little boring but necessary. Then we went over common abbreviations (c = cup, etc) and looked at various measuing cups and spoons to understand their different sizes. Then we were ready to make something! I used this curriculum that I found online, and did "lesson 1," making these yogurt cups:

The kids each mixed up their own tiny batch of dough, enough for one muffin-sized cup. They pressed the dough into the muffin tin and we baked them; they turned out great. I had intended to have them mix up some instant chocolate pudding to fill the cups, but I didn't have any on hand (which is weird, I always do), so we went with strawberry frozen yogurt which I'm guessing was much better. Frozen yogurt inside warm pastry? Yum!
As I hoped they would, they all loved it and I know that was not only because it was a tasty dessert, but also because they had made it themselves.

While the pastry cups were baking, we had a kitchen safety quiz and they washed all their dishes. It was a fabulous little first lesson. They all kept saying stuff like, "Cooking lessons aren't fun, Mom. They're REALLY fun!!

They don't know this yet (Shh.. it's a secret!) but for their next lesson they get to practice cracking eggs! I know they will think that's the coolest thing ever... I'm going to buy a whole bunch of extra eggs so they can each do several. As long as they don't get dropped on the floor I think it should be pretty fun.

FYI -- I am not going to follow that curriculum entirely; for example, I don't think my kids would have a lot of interest in making a cheese ball (lesson four). I am going to think of different kinds of recipes that are more common around this household that I think the kids would love to learn how to do, and that would be a nice reward for eating at the end of the lesson. I'm thinking cookies, homemade pizza; and I'm going to try to think of other things too that employ different cooking/baking techniques and require a variety of tools. I'll let you know what we come up with!