Baking Chocolate Chip Cookies in Kindergarten

Our first baking project was completed this week!  The kids make chocolate chip cookies and they tasted AWESOME!  

A few years ago I posted a project on Donors Choose.  Donors Choose is a website dedicated to helping teachers raise funds for classroom projects.  I really wanted to buy a convection oven for projects in the classroom.  I spend a lot of time in the kitchen with my own children and wanted to provide the kindergartners with some of those same experiences.  I had an oven in my former building and loved the curriculum tie-ins that happened in our cooking/baking unit.  Well, I'm happy to say that our cooking cart was funded within a week!  The oven was delivered to our classroom and we've been baking ever since.

Both of our full day kindergarten classes made chocolate chips cookies this week.  We tasted (in small quantities) the different types of sugar.  We smelled the vanilla.  We measured, mixed, scooped, and baked.  There were some new vocabulary words introduced and we read books about cooking.  We even dove into real cookbooks and looked for different text features.  At the end of the day, kids wrote how-to's telling how we made the cookies.  WOW!  That's a lot of work for a 5 or 6 year old!

Here's the recipe, if you want to try making these with your kids at home.

1 Cup Crisco shortening (original, not butter flavor)

3/4 Cup brown sugar

3/4 Cup white sugar

Mix until soft and fluffy.

Add:

2 Eggs

1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix just until blended.

Dry ingredients:

2 and 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp salt

Mix it up and add a package of chocolate chips.

Bake for 10 minutes (or less) on 350 degrees. My home oven is a standard oven, not convection, and this is what I do.

True confession time:  I make these at least once a week at my house.  (I can't believe I just admitted that!)

Happy baking!