When my girls do a fun patch, our troop implements some rules. This isn't for everyone, but we really like this process. We choose a patch, and then we choose 3 requirements to go with it. One requirement must be a hands on activity, one must be education based, and the third can be whatever they wish.
The patch we will discuss in this post is the Baking Fun Patch. The girls felt a need to create - really, who doesn't want to create something, some way. This was a fun patch to do, and offered a lot of variety within it, so the girls could experiment and make their own designs.
The three requirements the girls chose for this one were:
- Baking Safety Guidelines
- Sampling a variety of baking ingredients
- Bake cupcakes in a jar
We started this patch work, most appropriately, with baking safety guidelines. I first asked the girls what kind of safety guidelines they knew, and then handed out a small cheat sheet to each girl.
The gist of it is, wash everything, be safe, and bake with an adult. These girls are 5 and 6, so these are pretty all encompassing guidelines. I did find some other great sources for more detailed guidelines for older children. You can find them here:
- Safety Tips for Baking with Kids
- Safety Rules for Kids in the Kitchen
- Half Term Apple Crumble and Safety in the Kitchen
The next thing we did was sample a variety of baking ingredients. This doesn't have a purpose beyond letting the girls familiarize themselves with a variety of ingredients. This is likely the first foray into the kitchen for many of your girls, and tasting or sampling is a great way to learn about these things. We used this template, and sat the girls around a table. They each got a cute little set of measuring spoons from the dollar store, and used them to take a little bit of each item on the list.
Things listed were ingredients such as vanilla extract, brown sugar, and chocolate chips. We had each girl taste a small bit (emphasis on small - some of these are pretty bitter and not tasty!) Then they used some of the senses to describe the ingredient - taste, touch and smell.
This was a great experience - the girls really delved into the ingredients and discussed them in depth. It was a lot of fun to watch, and the girls really became familiar with many of the most common baking ingredients.
The last task on our list was to bake cupcakes in a jar. This was a GREAT experience with the girls - they really enjoyed baking AND the cupcakes were baked in a jar, which made them SO simple to take home.
Supplies:
- 1 Box of White Cake Mix (and ingredients needed for it)
- Food Coloring
- Empty Baby Food Jars
- Sprinkles
- Whip, in a Can
- Cookie Sheets
- 1 Large Bowl
- 6 Small Bowls
You can use cake mix from scratch, but I have Daisies, so it's in everyone's best interest in my troop to have the simplicity of a box mix!
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| Our colored cake mix! |
1. Mix the box cake mix, according the the instructions on the box. Once you've finished with this, scoop the batter into 6 separate bowls.
2. Each bowl is going to have a different color - we chose the colors of the rainbow this time, but I also liked the idea of shades of blue (since we are daisy's). This was a LOT of fun for my first graders - they really enjoyed dropping the colors into the and mixing them to make a variety of colors.
3. Next, fill the jars with the cake mix. Mix, layer and swirl the colors for fun designs. I put each color in a large ziploc (like you would for frosting) and cut the corner off, so the girls could just squeeze the cake batter into their baby food jars. My girls were *very* creative!
4. Place the baby food jars on a cookie sheet and bake the jars (baby food jars are tempered, so they won't have an issue in the oven) for the appropriate cupcake time.
**The one thing we DID learn, a little to late, is that you CANNOT fill the jars as full as we filled them in the first and second jar in this picture...because it bakes over! LOL!**
5. With the excess cake batter that baked over, we just lopped it off (leveled it), and set it aside. Set the cupcakes aside to cool, once they have been leveled.
6. The final step for the cupcakes is to top with whip and sprinkles. It made a super cute, super simple cupcake the girls could take home, and was a great serving size!
7. Since we are girl scouts, we didn't want to wast anything, so once we were done with all the cupcakes, we decided to have a taste of cupcakes - and we took the part we cut off earlier, and added some whip and sprinkles to it!
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! If you do this badge, please tell me about it! How did it go - did you do it the same, or tweak it a little? I love hearing about other's experiences.
this so helpful
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