Impressive! Looks like she's found a passion!

That is awesome!

I love it! Encourage her--who knows, maybe she will become a famous pastry chef!

I love that she put it all on top of a paper towel to protect your marble counters! :)

What a delightful post to see. You have an exceptional daughter!

aw shucks

You are blessed with a thoughtful, considerate child. Wishing her all the very best - with baking and beyond.

Thanks guys, this was a guilty pleasure post. My fave is the butter chunk on the right side. Bringing it to room temp.

Pretty darn special. Our chef son has a 2 yr old soon to be 3 who helps knead bread and can toss veggies in a pretend skillet like his Dad does...it is never too soon to applaud their talent. Congrats on a great DD and a very special Mom and big bro ! c

I love that visual. It's a beautiful set up.

Awesome! Great set up, and what a wonderful tradition to pass down to your family!
My Dad was the cook in our house, as am I, and our two sons seem to be following suit...
Cheers!!

Big smile here. Definite future GW-er :) More KAW photos, please!!

That is awesome! :)

lol, your daughter is so cute! And how fabulous that she's making her own fun, and going shopping! She sounds very independent :-)

She sounds like a great kid

Bring her over to the cooking forum.

We have another young cook there, I'm sure she'd love to meet another one

Wow! Impressive!
I love how organized she is with her ingredients.
I bet the goodies are awesome!

Great to see kids learn that a kitchen can be fun and creative. Especially when there's Chocolate involved.

Love it!

Get this girl over to the Cooking Forum stat!

I want to know what she was baking!

Oh that is super cute!!!

So sweet. I do love that she used paper towels to protect the counters :-)

You are a lucky, and smart, parent! I'm going to work harder at encouraging my children to cook and bake, thank you for sharing.

Looking for the "like" button!

awesome! don't tell her but she is learning math and science while making her creations! i hope it is as good for your tummy as it is for her brain:)
btw my kids and their friends think my cookies are gourmet and i too started baking at 10. kids will be lining up at your door for her baked goods!
also want to say you are a great mom for letting her do this! i know it is hard to watch someone else bake in your space:)

I want to add - does she teach any classes - I think we could all use some of her special skills!

So adorable! I would guess that she was making chocolate cookies or brownies, but I can't tell what the ingredient between the salt and the baking powder is. A cake would need more liquid.

I got started early too, but I started with bread, although I had no way of buying ingredients on my own, since I was three miles from the nearest store and did not receive an allowance.

She is definitely learning good skills.

I got one like that too....but she doesn't cleanup as well as yours. She's 14 now. Enjoy it...now when I want cookies, I just have to ask and voila...homemade cookies appear.

When I was 16 I wanted to make a Black Forest Cake from scratch. I needed Kirsch. I rode my bike to the liquor store to ask if they would sell it to me if it was for cooking. No, of course not. I had to wait until my dad came home and got me some.

This post was edited by itsallaboutthefood on Sat, Oct 11, 14 at 19:21

Wouldn't it be awesome if she opens a mail order baking business or something like that?

Love!

itsallaboutthefood - true story? Love it!!!!

This made me think - wouldn't it be fun to put out a challenge/start a thread, for all our junior chefs? Show us what you're cooking this week type of request. I'll see if DS will bite :)

So organized AND neat! Gotta love it!

Curious does she have favorites of what she likes to make? Cookies, cake or everything? And does she use cookbooks or favorite websites?

My 14 year old niece is into baking now, but just branching out into scratch. However sis said it looks like a bomb went off in the kitchen after she's done (like her Aunt Island!) so I'll have to share this with her.

Thanks for sharing. Please post back to this thread and show us some of her creations!

Just want to say: It's **never** to early to teach kids how to cook. Unfortunately, my OH never had a lesson and seems to have been banned from the kitchen. He can't cook, most of the time doesn't clean up, and hasn't a clue where anything is - except for knives that are on a magnetic board in plain view! Tell all your daughters not to marry a man who - at the very least - can't measure out ingredients or throw a salad together.

strayer, I hope you're telling your budding baker how many fans she has here. ;-)

Tomatofreak. Anyone who can read, open a box/can or boil water can learn to cook, some just choose not to because someone else does it for them. Same with cleaning up and finding stuff in a pantry. It's called enabling and never too late to change that. Honey you're in charge of salad tonite. Try it.

What an awesome child! The planning and organization strike me as very mature. The skills that she is displaying are going to stand her in very good stead in everything she does! This is indeed a very important step in her development - it took me years to be organized when baking!!

island, I'm about to go on strike. We'll see what happens.

strayer, I do hope you'll post a photo of her and/or one of her cakes, cookies or loaves of bread.

It's awesome that you as a parent let her do this!! My mom didn't really like us getting in the way and making a mess in the kitchen, so I didn't learn to enjoy cooking/baking until I was older....

so, good for her!! But good for you too!! :-)

So awesome. Ditto on everything everyone else said.

I have no idea why, but this brought tears to my eyes!
She's learning math, science, (as stated) but evidently kitchen staging skills! She could end up an actual chef, who also illustrates her work with her own photos.

In the meanwhile, be prepared to spend a fortune on ingredients for sports teams, bake sales, and of course, Christmas. LOL Because everyone's going to want her products.

My sisters and I also learned to bake young. I, at 10, which meant my sister at 8.5, and the next, helping us at 6. Unfortunately, my youngest sister had to learn to cook as an adult. She has kids. She burned pasta on the stove. She's improved in the last 20 years. LOL!

What a sweetie your little one is.

I've been away and just got the chance to read all these posts which are so sweet and encouraging. She was making crispy chocolate cookies with cream centers, like homemade oreos I guess.

This all started because she has a huge sweet tooth. I don't, so I can't sympathize. I was worried about her always wanting sweets, so I told her that I was not going to buy them, but if she wanted to she could make them herself from scratch. So she started and it turned into a love for baking. Now she enjoys the process more than the actual sweets I think.

Next she wants to learn bread, cinnamon rolls, croissants...

When we redid the kitchen her one request was that she have her own electrical outlet on the opposite side of the island from where I usually plug in. If I knew I had a baker on my hands I might have also tried to fit in 2 dishwashers and a bigger sink!

She decided that a completely separate catering kitchen where she can make her mess, and save our pretty kitchen for show and serving, would be perfect. I told her to study hard and get a good degree if she wants 2 kitchens in her future house!

Good thing I found GW when remodeling our kitchen last year. I was advised to go drawers, big drawers, more drawers, and even more drawers. Good thing because all that baking stuff takes up a lot of room!