If you like to bake as I do, then you’re always looking for something new. My daughters picked up my baking gene, so it’s something we enjoy doing together. At ages 11 and 9, they’re getting old enough to do some things in the kitchen by themselves and that’s why the Baketivity baking box was the perfect thing for these little bakers to test out. Here are our Baketivity reviews.
Baking with Baketivity
Baketviity is a subscription-based baking set that sends children a new baking project every month. Each box contains a recipe, detailed instructions, and most of the ingredients you’ll need. Additional ingredients include things like eggs and oil. But, everything else you need comes right in the box. Kids also get a cute baker’s hat and apron so they can feel like a true baker.
As a fun addition, each box also comes with a fun activity to pass the time while the creation is in the oven.
Our Baketivity kit was the Pencil Biscotti, a great choice for back-to-school time. It came with vacuum-packed bags of ingredients including flour, sugar, baking powder, vanilla sugar, sprinkles, nonpareils (those tiny sugar ball decorations), and icing. The only thing we had to supply was one egg and a ¼ cup oil.
The beginning steps are very easy and only involve mixing the ingredients. Our recipe just called for a whisk and spoon, so I didn’t have to worry about my girls handling any electric mixing equipment.
They were able to handle everything up until the part where they had to add the sprinkles. Some of the red sprinkles fell off the cookie log, so I had to help them push them on a bit. But, putting the yellow nonpareils on was much easier for them as they were able to handle it by themselves.
Oven Time
When it’s time to put the cookies in the oven, the instructions show an exclamation point inside of a triangle. This means kids should ask an adult to complete this step. So, I put the cookies in the oven for them. We baked them for about 25 minutes to get softer biscotti, but you can bake them for 30 minutes if you like the harder variety.
The baking time was accurate and they were done in the 25 minutes that was on the recipe. Once we let them cool down, I sliced the “pencils” from the log as well as created the diagonal cuts to make them look more pencil-like. This was easy — just like the picture showed.
Decoration Time
The cookies then needed to cool down to do the finishing touches with icing.
The instructions say to submerge the unopened tube into hot water to soften the icing. We did that and knead the tube as instructed to make it easier for the icing to come out. After snipping the end of the tube, we were ready to decorate.
The only hiccup? The tube wasn’t quite ready during the first go-around in the hot water. The icing was still hard and a bit difficult to squeeze out in the beginning. But, after submerging the tube in hot water once more to loosen the icing, we could finish decorating.
This was a little difficult for the kids to do themselves, but as long as there is an adult present to help, this step of the project should work out just fine.
Baketivity Reviews — The Taste Test
Once the icing was dry, it was time for the all-important taste test. And all of our reviews agreed: The cookies tasted good! They were a little on the sweet side with the sprinkles and nonpareils but went really well with a cold glass of milk!
Mom’s Final Thoughts
The educational activity that came with the Baketivity pencil biscotti was the kindness fortune teller. This contained useful information to teach kids about bullies and how to know if you’re being a bully or are the target of a bully. It also gives kids good ideas about how they can be kind to others.
As a parent, I appreciated that the topic of bullying was being addressed in a way that kids could understand and be interested in at the same time. It was a bonus that I didn’t expect to get with a baking kit. The fortune-teller game reminded me of a game I used to play as a child, so it was fun to see it make a little comeback!
Although our cookies didn’t look like mirror-images of the model on the recipe, I think we can get an “E” for effort! The girls enjoyed doing most of the activity by themselves and actually seeing how close they could get to the picture. This could make a cute gift for a child who loves to be in the kitchen and bake!
Baketivity subscriptions range from $32.95 on a month-to-month plan, to the best deal of $25.9 per month if you pay for the year in advance. You can also buy individual boxes to test it out and see if you like it.
Editor’s Notes: The publicist for Baketivity sent a free sample box to the writer for her family’s reviews. However, they did not influence her or her girls’ opinion of the product.
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