February 5, 2012

Cooking with Kids Holiday Camp in the News!

Doncha just love the big mouth??

What a picture!

The Kitchen Studio and I were recently featured in The Frederick Gazette for our kid’s holiday cooking camp.  This is a special two-day camp we run every year over the holiday break between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

This year our focus was on holiday foods from around the world, and boy, did those kids and teens whip up some tasty treats!

Here’s a little sample from the article:

“They could have spent their Christmas break at home playing video games or watching movies.

But instead, the 12 junior chefs in Christine Van Bloem’s The Kitchen Studio Cooking School, put on their aprons, pushed up their sleeves and spent two days of the winter break chopping veggies, mashing potatoes, grating, measuring, baking and learning to cook delicious holiday dishes from all parts of the world.

Like a military general commanding her troops, Van Bloem, of Frederick, stood surrounded by her little chefs in the middle of her kitchen in an office building on Buckeystown Pike on Tuesday and guided them as they worked to prepare a meal of English meat pie, German potato dumplings, Dutch desert pastry and whipped cream.”

Sounds good…right?  You can read the full article here.

Since we’re cooking with kids (all the time!), I thought we’d let you know that Kitchen Studio summer camp registration opens on March 1. This summer we’ll be offering a full 8 weeks of cooking camps for kids ages 6-8, 8-11, and 12-17.  You’ll be able to register at www.KitchenStudioFrederick.com.  Until then, keep on cooking!

Chef Christine

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Day 4: Culinary Adventure & Advanced Skills

Thursday’s camp may have been the best of the entire summer…at least from the kid’s point of view!  The morning group took a (theoretical) trip south of the border and whipped up quesadillas, fruit salsa, tomato salsa, and, of course, churros!  They ate them up!

The afternoon group spent their time making sushi, and tons of it! From rinsing the rice to learning how to roll the perfect roll, they did an amazing job.  They also pulled together tempura green beans & sweet potatoes, and just for fun, homemade marshmallows.  It was a great, great day!

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Day 3: Culinary Adventure & Advanced Skills

I can’t believe that we’re more than halfway done with our cooking camps this week!  What a great group of kids.  It feels like there are a million pictures, so enjoy!

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Day One: Advanced Skills

We started the teens easy today, before we build as the week goes on and they really get to test their kitchen mettle.  On the menu today: egg pasta sheets, marinara, and chocolate-peanut butter whoopie pies (oh my goodness – were they delicious!).  Here are some pics from our day (stay tuned tomorrow for the morning group):

Making pasta sheets

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Puff Pastry Craziness! (Bake-A-Rama Day 4)

Show a kid puff pastry and they’ll certainly want to cook it, and eat it, and play with it…you get the idea!  From taco puffs to Napoleons, we worked with puff pastry in all it’s glory, and finished the day with some terrific treats too. :)

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Bake-A-Rama: The Never Ending Day of Sweets

Today was Sweet-tooth Wednesday for all of our baking students.  Cookies, cakes, mac & cheese, ice cream, cinnamon rolls, and yes, a salad, paved the way for these teens and tweens ruling the kitchen.  After a game of musical recipes with the teens, a recipe reading exercise, they just kept churning out great treats!  And we had to all but restrain the morning group of jr. cooks from licking the fudge frosting off the table!  A crazy day, but also a totally awesome one.  Thanks for sharing your kids with us this week. :)

Fudge cake...awesome!

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