K8 is Discovery camp where campers have a wide array of hobbies to choose from like photography, high ropes and Rockwall, watercraft or culinary. Unlike all the other summers where I’ve been apart of the watercraft group I got a chance to channel my inner Martha Stewart, along with Algae and Okra. We had about 19 kids in our group and each session we got to bake something super yummy that the rest of camp would each during the meal. After all our hands had been washed and aprons put on we were ready to get to work. We split the kids up so they were in groups of about 3 or 4 accompanied by a staff member or LIT to make sure they stayed on the right track. With their group they would work together to follow the recipe and when they were done they would also use teamwork to do the dishes. After dishes were done and tables wiped down it was time for a taste test of what we had just made, previously baked by Algae (that was my favourite part).
We made some tea biscuits the first day they turned out really good but a little on the salty side. Tuesday was chocolate chip cookies and we had tons of fun making them and sneaking a little taste test of both the cooked cookies and a little bit of the batter. Wednesday we made apple crisp and in a 1-hour session we were able to turn out 24 delicious apple crisps which everyone as desert then enjoyed. Even if half of the groups accidentally added 7 teaspoons of cinnamon instead of 1 (curse my messy writing). Thursday we banana bread which turned out perfectly, it was great watching all the kids make funny faces and gross sounds as they dumped their rather unappetizing-looking brown bananas into their mix. We finished the week off on a sweet note with homemade vanilla cupcakes and icing, everyone loved this because there was so much to do for both the batter and the icing that it was all hands on deck. This was by far the messiest day because there was batter and icing everywhere and on everyone. We enjoyed our samples then had our second ones for dinner that night along with the rest of camp.
It was great to see kids getting hands-on and working together to gather ingredients, mix them and do the dishes. Baking is so relaxing even if its 19 kids running around, the culinary group for K8 Discovery camp was a total success and we gave each kid a pamphlet with all the recipes from our week to take home so they could try them out with their parents and make it for 4 or 5 instead of 260 people.