This week, the Petits Chefs were lucky to welcome Adell Shneer back into the lab this week for one of our favourite guest chef sessions – decorating sugar cookies. This was her TENTH visit to to work with the boys in cooking club and this time she taught a new generation of boys – a few brothers of boys who have been through the club and who have now graduated to the Senior School (the cooking club circle of life!).
Being Hallowe’en week, she brought pumpkins, bats, cats and ghost cookies to decorate but first we had a lesson in colour blending and then they got to work choosing colours to work with.
Then we got blending…
Adell showed them how to get the icing just the right consistency by adding a little bit of water at a time…
And then, for the first time ever (since we have a huge class this term – 17 boys in a very small space), we let the boys put the icing in the squeeze bottles themselves…
I was a bit worried how this would go (because I generally make a mess of it!) but I guess the promise of “more icing to use” was motivational as the boys did a great job! Then we got to work…
What’s really cool during Adell’s sessions is watching the boys get better at this with each visit (yes, I have some die hards who join cooking club every term) and this week a boy who’s worked with Adell a couple of times before nailed his pumpkin cookie design (after trying and not quite succeeding the last two times!).
Seeing his pride in his work was a great reminder that cooking with kids (as with anything, really) is all about practice. The more you do, the better you get (with the bonus being that the results of your practice along the way are edible!). In any case, the results of this year’s session were deliciously creative…
If you’ve ever wondered how to keep kids focussed and engaged during Hallowe’en week, this is the activity for you!
Adell, thank you, as always for sharing your talents with the boys (with good humour and much patience). We’re so grateful to people like you who make the Petits Chefs programme a lot richer. We are so lucky!