Cookie Bake-Off Activity for Youth Groups

Sometimes getting groups of youth together and planning something that they will enjoy can be a challenge. My husband asked me to come up with a group activity for boys that will help them engage with each other and have fun in the kitchen. So I came up with this idea.

We make cookies a lot around our home and they are a relatively easy thing for kids to bake. So I wrote out my base cookie recipe that I use for chocolate chip cookies at least once a week at home. When I make cookies at home I usually adapt the basic recipe to other cookies by making small adjustments. Chocolate chips are added with little less flour but adding in cocoa makes them double chocolate chip. Or a little less flour with some oatmeal and raisins makes them oatmeal raisin cookies. Which lead me to the idea of writing out the adaptations and letting the kids pick what they wanted to do.

So I wrote out my recipe on a big poster post-it note (they’re one of my favorite things and you can buy them on amazon here) And then made adaptations on the post-it notes. Each team had a colour and it told you how to adjust the recipe if you wanted to add that Ingredient. As a team, you had to decide what to add (and take away if needed.)

It was tons of fun to see them working together (or not working well ) and then tasting in the end.

Yup, one group made some terrible cookies when they added extra salt for some reason (boys!) but they all had fun. And ate a lot of cookies.

Here are some instructions and printable so you can use this idea too. Print if off and have one of the second page for each group. And then give them a marker or pen and they can choose together as a team what they’ll include and exclude.

This would be a really fun group date too for single adult kids and older teens. ♥️