Book Review: Illustrated Step-by-Step Baking Cookbook for Kids: 60 easy and delicious recipes

Illustrated Step-by-Step Baking Cookbook for Kids and Teens by Skye Wade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Everyone should know how to cook. Any child that’s able to reach the kitchen countertop (stepstools help!) and has the dexterity to use measuring cups and stirring spoons should be spending time in the kitchen, gaining knowledge and skills that will serve them for a lifetime. This cookbook is a great place to start. While it’s large enough to serve as the aforementioned stepstool, it’s not intimidating. The soothing color scheme sets a tone of relaxation. The use of simple drawings and pleasant photographs helps keep the tone upbeat and expectations reasonable. A free gift offered at the beginning of the book helps build a relationship between the author and the child.

We start with baking basics, where the child will learn how to prepare to cook, how to cook safely, how to measure, and will be taught the terminology that will be used in the recipes. Each recipe begins with an ingredient count number and difficulty level, as well as preptime, baking, resting and yield numbers. A photograph of what the finished product should look like gives the child a mental image to strive for. After that, everything is explained step-by-step in cute little drawings a child will feel comfortable with. After each recipe comes a review page, where the child is encouraged to rate the recipe on a five star system, and make notes about what they might change, ideas for experimenting, and who helped.

The one thing I would change about this cookbook would be the overabundance of sweet recipes. There’s plenty of cookies, cakes, muffins, pastries, but only four bread recipes, and a ‘savory and salty’ category which contains five recipes, three of which are pizza. Surely a child can bake a potato, assemble a casserole, or season a fish filet to bake in a toaster oven. And shouldn’t we be teaching them that there’s more for dinner than pizza?

All in all, I would love to have received this book as a child. It would have prepared me for life on my own much better than my little Easy-Bake oven did!

My thanks to author Skye Wade, BooksGoSocial, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a digital advance review copy of this book. This review is my honest and unbiased opinion.

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