This baking box for kids is the cure for summer boredom
The school year has just barely come to an end, and already my daughters are starting to complain of boredom. If it were up to them, iPads would be toggling between Netflix and Roblox in perpetuity, so before camps start, I’ve been searching for fun, engaging activities that also check the box of being an easy lift for me.
After a year of remote learning and occasional unmitigated chaos, I’m lacking both the free time and reserves of patience for planning elaborate projects. Enter: Baketivity, the kids baking boxes that come with one edible activity, shipped directly to your door. I ordered one in hopes of spending a couple of hours with my girls, sans screens.
About Baketivity
The idea behind Baketivity is to inspire families to gather in the kitchen, spending some quality, uninterrupted time measuring, mixing, and tasting together. In the process, kids can learn about baking, plus a little about math (measuring, fractions), and maybe some science (chemical reactions.)
How does it work?
You can sign up for a subscription where, starting at $25.95 per month, you’ll get a baking project kit in the mail. Single baking kits are also on offer, starting at $29.95, and options include gluten-free granola bars, holiday-themed boxes, and more. Each kit comes with most of the ingredients you’ll need, pre-measured, to make a project that ranges from cookies and cupcakes, to the more elaborate layered pudding pie towers and cake pops.
Along with the ingredients, kits also come with a recipe book that illustrates step-by-step instructions, plus one also-colorful book outlining an educational activity. Vacuum-packed, pre-measured ingredients are also color coded, so even pre-readers can follow along pretty easily.
I tried the Baketivity Cake Pop Baking Kit—here's what happened.
Instead of cookies or cupcakes, we opted for something we wouldn’t normally make (which, considering my baking skill level, is a pretty wide range.) Cake pops seemed like a just-challenging-enough option for my 4-, 5-, and 9-year old kids, and something novel they would have fun creating, so I ordered the Baketivity Cake Pops Baking Kit ($34.95).
As I mentioned, my baking skills are… lacking. So even though I read through the directions before starting the project, some of the smaller packets got lost in the shuffle. Which led to me frantically adding baking soda to the cake 4 minutes into baking it. And then salt 5 minutes in. Luckily, it didn’t affect the taste and since it didn’t need to look good,—it gets crumbled and mixed with frosting to form the cake balls—no harm done.
What I liked
The beauty of a Baketivity set is the built-in idea. Instead of brainstorming exciting things to do, the kit just arrives at your door—an instant activity. Also genius: the dry ingredients are included in the box (we added our own wet ingredients including vegetable oil, milk, butter, and an egg) and come pre-measured in individual packets. This means there’s no frenzy of grabbing boxes of baking soda and bags of flour from the pantry, or dirtying a pile of measuring cups and spoons.
Beyond those tangible benefits of the kit, though, the best part was spending time with my girls. They griped a little about putting down their iPads, and then instantly were drawn in to the whisking and mixing, getting happily messy crushing the baked chocolate cake into crumbs (when else can you do that to a freshly-baked cake?) and rolling the mixture into golf ball-sized orbs. Dunking them into warm, melted chocolate and dusting each with colorful sprinkles was their favorite part, and—seeing their joy—mine, too.
What I didn't like
The only small issue we had was with some of the pre-measured ingredients. Since cocoa powder, for example, came in two different sized packets—one for the cake and one for the frosting—we accidentally added the wrong amount to the cake.
Totally my fault, but it was one of the perils of not measuring myself. I didn’t pay enough attention to which measured ingredients went where, leading us to scooping out the extra cocoa from the cake mix. Somehow even after my missteps, the cake balls still tasted perfect.
Is Baketivity worth it?
Between my kids’ excitement over getting mail and the built-in fun and thoughtful activity, plus the simplicity of the project and legitimately delicious results, Baketivity’s one-time baking kit was a win for us. My girls and I got to pause everything else—deadlines and laundry for me, arguing and iPads for them—and collaborate on a delightful dessert project.
Get Baketivity baking kits starting at $29.99
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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.