Inspired by the Great British Bake-off I’ve been planning a baking evening for the cub scouts. This is a group of 23 boys aged between 8 and 10. One bakes regularly and is really quite accomplished. I don’t know about the rest although I suspect the majority rarely if ever bake. The plan is to invite parents along for tea afterwards so we need cakes/biscuits that are ready to eat not long out of the oven. and we only have one oven in the scout hut with the possibility of getting access to a second oven in the nearby Guide hut. I’d like them to work in small enough groups that they really feel they have done the baking, not just assisted an adult.
So a bit of a challenge!
Some recipes were obvious to include. A couple of years ago I made Star biscuits out of a very slim Usborne Christmas Cooking book aimed at children with the local brownie group. The biscuits look fabulous with the stained glass window effect and they weren’t hard to make. And kids love using cookie cutters.
I felt a muffin recipe was worth including, these are so easy and lumpy batter is good so I’ve included a banana and chocolate chip muffin recipe.
I’ll include a no bake Krispie cake but don’t know which one yet.
For the experienced baker I’m going to find a bundt recipe and I have a nordicware fleur de lis tin.
Flapjacks would be good in include but I’m a bit worried about the length of cooking time and the lower temperature. I watched Episode 2 of Lorraine Pascale Baking made easy and her flapjacks looked good. She also did a savoury palmier which made me wonder about trying a sweet palmier for the cubs.
So I tried out a sweet palmier using bought puff pastry, and dissolved sugar butter and cinnamon. They proved to be very robust even straight from the oven. My cat Willow stuck her nose around the oven door as I opened it. I was worried she could burn herself and as I chased her away I dropped the tray. It landed right side up fortunately and although the baking parchment bounced off the tray the palmiers stayed on the parchment and none of them broke! They taste nice, I think I’ll increase the cinnamon and decrease the butter a little.
The cubs will need an adult hovering to help them keep the pastry rectangular as they roll it out and I suspect they will need some help rolling them up before cutting but they should be able to do a lot themselves. I’ll get Aidan to try tomorrow with the other half pack pastry following my typed up recipe and see how it goes.
100 Cook Books 