24 Easy Baking Recipes for Kids (That Won’t Leave Your Kitchen Covered in Flour)
The family who cooks together…can wind up bickering over a batch of blobby-in-the-center cupcakes. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With these easy baking recipes for kids, you can all roll up your sleeves without losing your sanity. They’re simple, straightforward and—most importantly—so delicious you’ll swear your child’s the second coming of “cake queen” Maida Heatter.
RELATED: 27 Toddler Dinner Ideas Your Picky Eater Might Actually Try
1. Oven-Baked S’mores Bars
Your kids want to go camping in the backyard. No problem. For dessert, have them join in on making these six-ingredient s’mores bars. They’re every bit as delightful as roasting marshmallows over an open fire without you having to, well, start a fire.
2. Heart Thumbprint Cookies
You already have their handprints immortalized in finger paint and clay—why not sugar cookie dough? Kids will enjoy turning their thumbprints into heart shapes and “coloring” them in with jam. (Pro tip: Use seedless jam so it’s easier to spread.)
3. Lucky Charms Krispie Treats
Just when they thought Rice Krispie Treats couldn’t get any better, you bust out Lucky Charms and take things to the next level. What’s that on the floor? Oh, just the mic you dropped. (And OK, maybe a few stray marshmallows.)
4. World’s Biggest Peanut Butter Cup
You take care of melting down the chocolate; they can handle measuring the ingredients and the final result. After all, somebody’s got to record whether you’ve just broken a Guinness Record.
5. Peanut Butter and Jelly Blondies
It’s peanut butter-jelly time, and you’ll be able to whip these up faster than that song can get stuck in your head. Fair warning, though: After drawing jelly swirls in a pastry bag (or resealable bag with a corner snipped off), your kids may start requesting to make their own PB&J sandwiches…swirly jelly included.
6. Fruit Pizza
Your children always argue pizza can work for any meal—well, here’s proof it can work for dessert too. Feel free to use whatever fruit you have on hand (chopped apples work well), or skip the make-your-own-sugar-cookie-dough steps and use store-bought instead.
7. 30-Minute Angel Food Cupcakes
Let your kids be the official Adders-to-the-Stand-Mixer, pouring in each ingredient and watching this light, fluffy batter come to life. In the words of the iconic Ina Garten, if you don’t have time to make homemade whipped cream frosting, store bought is fine.
8. Blackberry Jam Pie Crust Straws
If you’re craving the flavor of pie but don’t think your kids have the attention span to cope with all of that kneading, rolling and crimping dough from scratch, we’ve found your perfect dessert. These pie crust straws use puff pastry (and just five ingredients total!) to get the flavor you love without all the hassle.
9. Brownie Pops
Cake pops can be a pain to make (mixing crumbled cake with frosting, rolling it into balls, then dipping? Who has time for that?). These brownie pops are an easier—and just as delightful—take on the dessert. You simply add popsicle sticks to baked brownies and chill them before dipping them in melted chocolate.
10. Chocolate Chip Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting
Yes, this recipe involves a springform pan, but don’t let that intimidate you. In reality, it’s as simple as measuring ingredients, dumping them into the bowl of a stand mixer, and mixing them together.
11. Rocky Road Cookies
It can be tricky to tell when chocolate cookies are done, so recipe developer Erin McDowell recommends erring on the side of under-baking these treats, so they stay soft and chewy. Though if yours turn out crunchy, that’s all the more reason to serve them with a glass of milk. We doubt the kids will complain.
12. Chrissy Teigen’s 3-Ingredient Chocolate Mousse
Leave it to Chrissy to come up with a microwave mousse recipe that tastes every bit as decadent as one you’d order at a restaurant with price tags normally reserved for anniversary dinners. Your kids will give it an even higher compliment: “It’s better than a pudding cup!” Hear, hear.
13. Triple Cookie Skillet Pie
Any one of these cookie doughs (chocolate s’mores! Snickerdoodle! Chocolate chip!) could make for a fine cookie cake in its own right, but if you have a lazy Saturday all together, you might as well go all out and make this trifecta in one cast iron pan. Your kids will be talking about it for months to come.
14. 5-Minute S’mores Mug Cake
You’ll want to double (or triple, or quadruple) this recipe to feed your crew. Everyone can take turns making their own dessert, though if they like their marshmallows toasty, you’ll have to handle the broiling part. It’s totally optional though.
15. Strawberry Biscuit Cookies
Imagine a scone without the fuss…and all of the layers of flavor you’d taste from a strawberry shortcake. That’s what these drop cookies are like. They’re the kind of easy crowd-pleaser that kids of all ages can help bake.
16. Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes
These treats are like a Reese’s Cup in cupcake form. Sally McKinney, the blogger behind them, first released this recipe in 2013, but she recently rereleased this modified version that she swears stays moist longer. As if they’ll last that long.
17. Joanna Gaines’s Signature Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sorry, Toll House—this recipe’s about to become your new go-to. These cookies get crispy around the edges but stay gooey in the center. Your kids may not be Fixer Upper fans, but surely they can appreciate that.
18. Lemon Bars
With just five ingredients—most of which you probably have on hand already—you can make these sweet-tart lemon bars. If you don’t have a food processor, you can always use your hands to combine the crust ingredients, mixing them together until they form pea-sized crumbles. (Plus, isn’t it more fun that way?)
19. Giant Snickerdoodle Cookies
If your kids love Snickerdoodles, they will lose their minds over these jumbo-sized treats. They can help roll them in cinnamon and granulated sugar before baking. The result? Crackly and chewy.
20. 10-Minute Strawberry Cobbler
Sometimes you want an afternoon project, sometimes you just want a fun, fast activity that will satisfy your kids’ sweet tooth. This recipe is the latter, but nothing about it tastes rushed (even if it is microwaved, rather than traditionally baked in the oven).
21. Favorite Banana Cake
Grab some forks and let the kids go to town mashing bananas for this sweet-but-not-too-sugary cake. The cream cheese frosting really takes this dessert to the next level, and it can last in the fridge up to four days. What’s not to love?
22. Doughnut Muffins
Doughnuts often seem off-limits for home-cooking because of, well, all of that hot oil. These muffins skip that step, letting you bake them right in the oven. But the end result is every bit as delicious as a box of Munchkins. Your kids’ favorite part? Dipping ‘em in cinnamon and powdered sugar.
23. Fluffy Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies
They’re vegan, they’re gluten-free and they only dirty one bowl. Oh, and they use less oil, subbing some of it out for almond butter, giving you a boost of protein and fiber in each bite. But all you have to tell your kids is that these chocolate chip cookies come out fluffier than Agnes’s unicorn in Despicable Me.
24. Blueberry Lemon Yogurt Cake
You take care of the zesting and making the lemon juice-honey mixture, the kids can tackle the mixing, measuring and folding in blueberries. It’s a team effort that results in a loaf cake you’ll want to eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. (Hey, no judgments here.)
