Recently, Les Petits Chefs baking club welcomed our first in-person guest to the school since March 2020! Those of you who have been reading this site since at least 2010 will know that the cooking club used to host guest chefs and food enthusiasts to work with the students and we were even lucky enough to visit some restaurant kitchens around the city and cook in them!
Then along came a global pandemic and I moved my cooking club online in April 2020. That iteration of the club ran in some form until March 2024 (including a 7 week online cooking camp in the summer of 2020!) and we had plenty of guest chefs during those years but only virtually.
Adell Shneer of Art to Eat Cookies has already visited the school 13 times so she is no stranger to working with my students, and I was thrilled to have her as our first guest this year!
Students enjoyed a mini-lesson in colour theory and collaborated to choose 12 different colours for the icing (and problem-solve when we ended up with too many blues!). Then, they learned how to mix the royal icing to *just* the right consistency.
Adell showed them how to pipe the edges of the cookies, “flood” the centres with colour as well as a few different patterning techniques.
The focus and concentration were as impressive as the creative cookies making their way home after the session!
Suffice to say, the kids had a blast and I’m not sure how many of those cookies waited 24 hours to set 😉
I mean, I KNOW some of them didn’t quite make it out of the door of the school even though I pleaded with the students to make sure to keep them safe until their parents could at least SEE them (even if they weren’t going to share), I mean, who wouldn’t want to share this lovely work?
So fun, right?
Thanks Adell for sharing your talents with us! We hope you’ll come back again!
Stay tuned to read about the next session and some adventures with pâte sucrée (sweet shortcrust pastry), chocolate ganache and crème pâtissière!
_________
Buy my books! In the French kitchen with kids and French Food for Everyone: le goûter (after school snacks), le dîner (dinner) and le petit déjeuner (breakfast) are out now!
Click here for details and how to order!
