Kids’ cooking kits and baking kits seem like the perfect way to educate, feed, and have fun with your kids all at the same time. But that’s also true of ordinary cooking and baking with your kids. So are kids’ cooking kits worth the price? We tried one cooking kit, Eat2Explore, which focuses on geography, and one baking kit, I’m the Chef Too, which has a STEM focus. In both cases, we did several with kids of various ages. We have no relationship with either company and paid full price for all the kits.
I’m the Chef Too
We subscribed to this service, so they sent us a surprise box each month. That was exciting for the kids. Since nearly everything we needed was in the box, we could usually let the kids open the box and be surprised, and then go and bake. We’re saying “usually” because there have been a few that required whipped cream — and therefore a quick trip to the store, since we don’t always have whipping cream on hand. If you prefer, you can buy kits individually at the I’m the Chef Too website.
You can also find some of their kits on Amazon, which is where we first encountered them. We gave a couple to a family with two elementary school kids, and they had a great time with the Galaxy Donuts and its astronomy activities. We later made traditional glazed doughnuts together at the kids’ suggestion. We’ve seen since then that these kits encourage a love of baking. Clear instructions on recipe cards that you can save are part of the reason — you can make the treats in the future with your own ingredients.
The combination of a baking project and related STEM activities is an effective way to encourage interest in educational subjects as well. The company has classroom versions of many of their kits, with additional educational materials. We haven’t tried them, but they should be great for schools, homeschool groups, scout troops, and neighborhood gatherings.
Here’s an octopus cupcake we made with a 5 year old and a 7 year old. It was a lot of fun and tasted great. Everything needed was in the package except for perishables like butter and milk, including the silicone baking cups. We put them into a muffin tin, but we didn’t have to. Our result looked a bit different from the illustration in the package, but we were not bothered by this.
These are cloud cookies made with cotton candy with the same children. The little girls did everything, although a grownup helped with reading instructions. The companies says that confident readers can do the whole project on their own. We haven’t tried that, since we enjoy baking with the kids and don’t want to feel left out. Â Again, the cookies were delicious and fun to make.
The next couple of photos show a teenager making the Bunny Bundts. Several grownups joined in (we bought some more ingredients so we’d have plenty for Easter dinner), but our kid was by far the best at piping. The results for teens and non-baker grownups were a lot like the illustration you see above.
The templates were enough for our teen to make great-looking bunny feet.
One of the adults dyed some coconut for extra awesome presentation.
As of this writing, the cost for a kit is $36.95, with discounts for subscriptions of various lengths. The ingredients and equipment make four servings or more. Will you get $36.95 worth of fun and learning, not to mention yummy treats? Absolutely.
Could you save money by doing it yourself? We needed more than four servings of the bunny cakes. We bought more cake mix, icing mix, fondant of the same brand, and candy melts for the bunny feet. You may have the ingredients for cake and icing on hand. The fondant and candy melts alone, in the smallest packages available, came to $31.40. We had leftovers, but we’re not likely to use them. In this case, we actually would have saved money by just buying two of the bunny kits.
Eat2Explore
Eat2Explore makes cooking kits with a geography focus, and they also offer subscriptions. We bought separate kits for specific countries. One was a Cinco de Mayo kit with boxes for France and Mexico, which will make sense if you know the history of the holiday. Another was for Singapore. Eat2Explore has a web page for each kit with links to lots of information, useful things like a printable shopping list, lists of books and movies, and more. We were impressed by the thoroughness of the preparation. If you want to put together a club or use these kits for homeschool group meetings, they make it easy.
Eat2Explore makes an adult version and a family version of each kit. Each has an informative booklet, often including suggestions for books and movies plus a QR code to take you to more online content. The family boxes include a plastic tool, sturdy enough to keep for future use, and definitely designed for learning new kitchen skills. We tried the adult version of the Singapore box and enjoyed the book a movie suggestions (Crazy Rich Asians and Auntie Lee’s Delights) plus Spotify lists. Consider the adult box for teens.
We made the Chicken Carnitas from the Mexico family box with a 6 year old and an 8 year old.
Both styles of kits include a shopping list. We were happy to see that some of the ingredients were already in our garden. We began by picking the radishes and cilantro for the salsa from the garden, providing an opportunity to learn a little extra about plants.
The eight-year-old had a great time making the pineapple salsa.
You have to marinate the chicken for a couple of hours, so this is not a spur of the moment project, but otherwise it was easy. Adults cooked the chicken and the six-year-old warmed the tortillas. Everyone helped plate the dish up — and it was delicious.
In fact, all the dishes have been delicious. Sometimes they’re a little sophisticated for the kids’ palates, but the more involved they are with preparation, the more willing they are to give it a try. They also ofer vegetarian and gluten-free options.
So we got opportunities to learn about exotic places, the kids got chances to learn cooking skills, geography, and cooperation as well as practicing math and reading skills, and the dinners were delicious. Each box includes recipes and seasonings for three meals — you can basically do a week-long country study around one kit. At this writing, each box costs $29.95, and there are some price-saving bundles as well.
Could you do this yourself for less? One thing you’d have to figure out first: how much is your time worth? You could think about studying France, come up with the idea of making some fish en papillote, poulet rôti, and boeuf bourguignon, find the recipes, adapt them for the kids, get all the ingredients for seasonings and sauces, do the research for the geography lessons, art, music, film, and literature connections, pick up some fun extras like enamel pins and stickers and kids’ cooking tools…
Assuming that you’re up for all that, then perhaps you could. Seasonings and sauces come in the kit, but you have to buy the main groceries yourself. How much of the classic seasonings for dishes from Singapore do you already have on hand? Do you have a local Asian market where you can find what you need? And how much would it cost you up front to buy all the seasonings in full-size packages at the grocery store in order to make just a couple of dishes? Will you use them again?
Essentially, you’re paying about $10 per meal for all the seasonings and sauces, a whole lot of preparation for the associated lessons, a book on the country you’re studying, and the fun of cooking together in a smoothly organized fashion. We’d say this is worth it.
Have you tried out other kids’ cooking and baking kits? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
