What’s better than seeing kids deeply engaged in learning skills that’ll enrich them for a lifetime? Baking is just such a skill. But with so many activity options in school and out, why bake?
Sofia Votava, an Orange Co. Girl Scout, shares how, and why, she and her family got started baking together. Stay tuned through out February to learn more about how their baking start up became a special baking outreach through Sofia’s Girl Scout Gold Award program, The Knead for Baking.
Truly, baking was truly remote from Sofia’s family’s daily scramble…
“Growing up as a competitive dancer meant I spent over 20 hours weekly at the dance studio. It also meant I never saw my mom make me dinner, let alone bake. My brother and I were accustomed to eating on the go, since the dinner hour fell right in the middle of my dance classes and my brother’s basketball practices. “From scratch” was a foreign concept to me until I was in middle school.
After my mom got remarried to my step-dad Vic, our lives changed in more ways than one. One weekend, I had a to make a dessert for my 5th grade holiday party. That’s when Vic’s secret came out! He had been a pastry chef as his first career. I’ll never forget the feeling of baking with him for the first time. This bonding moment inspired Vic to start baking again and our entire family joined in the fun.
Before we knew it, we were baking as a family every weekend. Vic first taught us the basics: measuring ingredients, multiplying recipes, and even cracking the eggs.
HBA Glossary video: How to Measure Flour
As a family, we made it our mission to spend quality time together in the kitchen. My favorite memories with my family happen to be while we were baking together.
Sofia’s mom Christine relates “Baking as a family has brought us closer together. It is one of the only times during our hectic lifestyle that we can all focus and work as a team. We turn off our phones and tune into each other.”
Access Baking Food Safety 101 and many more “helps” to Get Started baking at the Home Baking Association.
