to think Guides should be able to make cakes?

[bonbonours]

Maybe I'm just old.... My 10 year old goes to Guides and came home having done Valentine's baking with a pretty bag containing a chocolate crispie cake and a cupcake. She told me the cakes were a Shopkins cake mix where you just added water. They then iced them with runny water icing and sprinkles. Now I thought Guides was partly about learning life skills. Am I unreasonable to think learning to make a basic 4442 sponge cake should not be beyond a group of 10-14 year olds? My 6 year old could tell you the ingredients for a sponge cake. Using a cake mix is a) not real cooking b) tastes horrid c) more expensive than buying ingredients so not teaching good money skills either.

Maybe you could offer to go along and run the session.

Perhaps it was fun?

Depends on time and facilities too.

I am sure it wouldn’t be easy in a church hall with the need to take scales and mixers etc. Sounds as though it was about decorating cakes for Valentines other than the actual making of them. I assume they made the crispie cakes?

YANBU. And yes you should volunteer to do run a session doing this. Remember that session times need to be long enough to do the making, baking and cooling though .

A) Did she enjoy it?
B) Isnt the group run by volunteers (who may not have lots of spare time to run round getting ingredients)?
C) Perhaps they have limited cooking equipment.
You can cook with her at home though and illustrate the taste/cost differences.

Maybe the cake mixes were donated

Are you really complaining that the cakes at Guides weren't sufficiently 'from scratch'?

making endless cakes is why lots of girls leave Guides. Some of us preferred camping and bulding things and burning stuff you know.

Last year, we ran a backwoods cooking session for the Cubs, which included baking. O M G the MESS!! Do not underestimate the amount of mayhem and chaos that a group of that age can make in less than 10 minutes, while you are distracted policing 1 group of messers or answering a method question from someone trying to do it right, another 3 groups will simultaneously manage to get flour, eggs, butter, milk, breadcrumbs and onion in a major mess on tables and the floor all across the hall.

And then, because the time is so short to get the session successfully finished, there is not enough time for the Cubs/Guides to clear up, and the leaders have to spend an extra half an hour clearing up afterwards after the Children have gone home.

I suspect it was a timing thing more than anything else. Its very different running a cooking session with 1/2 of your own children in your own kitchen, to running the same session with 25 in a hall and not having the same access to equipment, and needing to get things baked in time to cool and then ice before hometime comes.

They would need fridges for eggs/butter/milk, there is more food waste and leftover ingredients that would need to be stored, etc if baking from scratch. Can ten-year olds really beat a mixture hard enough and long enough to cream sugar into butter? Lots of reasons why it might not be practical. Following the instructions for processed food is also a life skill of its own kind.

What the PP have said.
Since when was girlguides specifically about teaching you life skills of cooking and money skills?! Way to piss on their chips when they try to do a fun cooking activity with the limited time, budget and numerous kids to oversse. If you are so keen to teach your 10 year old how to bake cupcakes from scratch, you could try teaching her yourself. Just a thought.

I think you should go along and teach them how to do it properly if it bothers you.

I agree OP. I'm a Brownie leader and we often bake from scratch, provided I have enough helpers and no-one is booked into the hall after us as it always runs over the allotted time. Having said that I need to do most of the weighing and measuring in advance so we can fit it in. If the challenge was to decorate the cakes as well there wouldn't be time to do that (when we made Christmas cakes it took one meeting to line the tins and mix the batter (leaders/volunteers took them home to bake) and then another meeting to decorate them.
Is there a chance that your daughter's guides are working on the confectioner badge or GFI? I think that's to do with sugar work and decoration rather than baking.

and YYY to pp suggestions to volunteer: many hands make light work: especially with guides where they are supposed to choose and organise their own activities. It's sometimes like herding sheep trying to get anything at all accomplished in the time allowed.

25 girls all crowded into a tiny hall kitchen with one cooker/oven making cakes. Yup, that sounds practical. My daughter's Guides are decorating gingerbread men in a few weeks - I am not thinking for one minute that they will be making the gingerbread too.

If you're concerned, volunteer to help out. I'm sure the Guiders would be delighted to see you. Or just sit at home and slag off the people who are giving up their evenings to entertain your daughter, your choice.

Did they have time and equipment to do cakes from scratch? Are you willing to clean up after? Take dirty bowls home to wash?

Most of these children won't be baking at home. Guides used to be for older girls (12 plus) in my day. Baking with proper ingredients in a large group seems more a 12 plus activity than one for most 10 year olds tbh.

Tbh I don't really learning to make a cake from scratch is a life skill - if she enjoyed it, she enjoyed it - is that not the point?

Since when is baking cupcakes a life skill? And yes to everything else others have said about practicalities

I agree with the point you are making but I run a kids group every few weeks. Every cooking session goes wrong and takes twice the length. It only really works in groups of two or three. I can see why they would resort to mixes. Personally I would ask for parent helpers for that week and do it that way. Why not suggest it carefully? Perhaps ask a few parents before suggesting then you can give them a list of names of helpers.

Guide leaders are unpaid volunteers who look after your child and provide them with things to do for little thanks, and in some cases no thanks at all, just why didn't you do it this way.

Unreasonable ungrateful moaning parents like you are the reason I gave up volunteering.

Fwiw making a cake from scratch is one thing with a few kids in your own kitchen, but isn't always possible or desirable in a hut/hall kitchen without all the facilities, with a lot of children and in a limited time.

I was a Queen's Guide back in the day and I did it without ever baking a cake. My mum taught me to bake. I did lots of stuff at Guides that I would never have done at home, camping cooking on wood fires, working in teams, not domestic stuff.

Guides used to be for older girls (12 plus) in my day

Guides age hasn't changed since my day - it's always been Brownies from 7-10, Guides 10-15 and then it was Rangers after that, think it's now Explorers. Scouts/Cubs/Beavers has different ages, and Rainbows for girls 5-7 is new since I started.

Our Guides used to meet in a church hall where there wasn't even a kitchen, unless you count a wee cupboard with a kettle and fridge in it.

Maybe I'm old then Luna?

I'm sure I was in Brownies until 12 - I think I moved to guides just before High School (Scotland) but I didn't like it.

Rainbows didn't exist as you say and I had an actual beret rather than the bobble hat. We did cooking badge at home/in another parents kitchen, never cooked at the hall that I can recall.

Beavers is age 6 (or 5 and 3 quarters) to 8, Cubs 8-10.5 and Scouts 10.5 - 14, Explorers 14-18 (I think). But there is flexibility and overlap with the age groups of about 6 months or so I think.

As a former guide, rainbows and brownie leader you should volunteer to run a session.
Guiders love parents getting involved but few can ever be arsed.
Guide/brownie/rainbow leaders are unpaid volunteers and subs are cheap so there isn't loads of money after paying rent and census fees etc to buy materials. Often the facilities are very basic and there is a time constraint. It can be done with planning. I always asked the girls to say what they were interested in doing and then used that to plan the activities for the term and pick a badge per term to work through. Please be nice to the volunteers who give up their time.
Most parents are frankly rude and evasive. Not why I stopped doing it but it didn't help.