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.

so donate enough kitchen supplies (and your washing up services after the session) so they can all mix and make them from scratch next time - FFS!

Very few halls which Guides hire will have full capability to do proper cooking with the girls. My children's troop attempted it last week, the oven was slow and didn't cook correctly, there weren't the right tins for cooking (some of the ones brought didn't fit the oven) and so on. This meant by the end, they hadn't been able to produce a proper meal. It's not like a home economics/food tech lab in a school.

I don't know if you're old Wankers ;-) I'm mid 40s and definitely started Guides at 10. Depends on your birthday though, I'm an April birthday and didn't actually start at Guides until the September after my birthday because of the long summer break.

I had a bobble hat at Brownies with the brown tunic dress and crossover yellow tie thing, at Guides we wore navy skirt, blue shirt, neckie and the air hostess cap thing.

I agree a basic Victoria sponge recipe would have been easy enough. The trick with cleaning up the mess is to get the kids to tidy while the cake is in the oven. Access to a fridge is not necessary as the ingredients are used immediately.

My 6 and seven year old can both cook Victoria sponges without help now (although I always do the oven bit). They just weight the eggs, then add the same amount of flour, sugar, butter and so on. Just like my gran did.

Cooking is such an essential skill!

My 6 and seven year old can both cook Victoria sponges without help now

As can my kids. But multiply your two kids by 10 or 12 and put all those kids in one room with one oven and surely you can appreciate the chaos??

I'm in my 50s now Luna - pre bobble hat but had a very very short brown dress and cross over tie thing with a brown beret. in my pocket was 2p for the phone box, a safety pin, piece of string, a handkerchief, a pencil and notepad/piece of paper - probably other stuff as well, but we were expected to be able to deal with major emergencies that we may come across with that "equipment" (presumably only on the way to and from brownie meetings as I didn't wear the uniform full time!) and we'd get it randomly checked at weekly meetings. They took no shit in those days! :o

I'm an ex Brown Owl.

We quite often did baking/food prep, but dividing the girls into groups to use the kitchen and one oven safely takes a lot of time and usually meant the leaders staying after the meeting to do the washing up. I imagine that it was time factors that led the Guide leaders to opt for cake mix.

Why not sign up for Sainsbury's Active Kids to collect cooking equipment for your unit? Then you might persuade the leaders to do more cooking - especially if you offer to lend a hand.

Cooking is such an essential skill!

Isn't this baking rather than cooking so not really that essential? I cook reasonably well and am passing those skills on. I never bake, we haven't died.

mrsdraper1 Well done for tailoring activities to the main desires of the group and having the skills to do so. My daughter and others gave up brownies when it was mostly domestic skills (which she could learn at home) - when she could see cubs doing camping, canoeing and outdoorsy things. I gave up when I saw competitive parents trying to get their DDs sleeves covered in badges.

Since when is making a cake a life skill

WH&T - we were obviously Brownies at the same time and possibly in the same unit!

I've been in Guiding for 30 years and it has never started at 12.

We bake at Guides but it is a lot of work, especially as there is only one tiny oven that is ancient and cannot bake a sponge cake very well. Sometimes I bake cupcakes at home and bring them in to decorate. At Christmas the girls bring their own chocolate log and we make ganache and decorate in the hall. Timing is extremely tight. Sessions are two hours but we have lots to fit in and mixing, baking, cooking and decorating cup cakes for 30 children is not do-able. If we bake, it's on a 4 week rotation per patrol.

I was a Guide in 1972 at the age of 10 so it has been for 10 year olds for at least 45 years, definitely not a recent change. I had a bobble hat in Brownies (which I hated). There were no cooking facilities where we met. Cooking and baking is a skill but making one cake with poor facilities in a large group is not the best way to learn that skill. I learned to cook at home (just to make this more confusing my mum was the Guider, and a cooking teacher), but also at camp where we most of our meals from scratch on a fire. Great times. We always talked about building a camp oven and baking but never got round to it. Steamed pudding was the closest we got.

Having been a guide leader eons ago it's always been interesting to hear parents explain how easy various activities would be, if only we put our minds to it. But they are just, unfortunately, "too busy" to help.

Making a cake is actually a very useful life skill. It teaches maths skills, measuring and weight, what ingredients go together and why, how to use an oven, how to present things - I'm a teacher too and we do regular cooking because of the wide skill set it covers. And, er, it's fun...

My Brownie unit manages baking cakes. We have a 90 minute session although we lose the edges off that on our routines, so about an hour of activity time. We have a functional kitchen, and a good store of equipment. Overrunning for leaders cleaning isn't too problematic as we lock up ourselves and aren't followed by another group.

Baking is a bit of a mission, it always feels chaotic, but the girls always love it. Their results can be interesting... they struggle with mixing smoothly and it is slower than at home. Recently we did some frosted cupcakes. In order to get the cakes cooked and frosted, the dry ingredients were premeasured and each six received them in a food bag. They then collected wet ingredients measured out by leaders and mixed them. They simply wouldn't have the time otherwise. They mixed the frosting as the cakes cooked. With a good team, organisation, preparation and equipment it can be done. Some units won't have the resources.

Where the focus has been decorating we have given out pre made plain biscuits/ cakes.

If it is possible to bake from raw ingredients, it is worthwhile as it makes you appreciate what food is made up from. A "just add water" type mix seems to offer the least benefit of all options.

Whether OP is reasonable or not depends on the means of the unit.

At rainbows we do baking but I don't worry myself about maths and stuff, we have fun, work as a team mixing our pre bought cake mix, relax, chat about our week. It's not school!

I'm quite impressed with the amount of things they got through in one meeting. Baking and decorating for a large group in what, 1.5 hours? I certainly wouldn't be moaning about the packet mix. I wouldn't even attempt that much in one evening with my cubs. And I make cakes for a living!

I assume you didn't forget to show your DD your disappointment at the bad job done.
Bake with her yourself, it's easier to bake with one person than have a big group of children, some of whom may have never baked and suddenly they are expected to know how to make a batter, bake and decorate.
Have a and lighten up. They had fun decorating the cookies I can imagine so just enjoy it.

In guides it's usually the patrols who organise things. So if the girls are to organise the shopping, the. It depends on what they bring.

We do baking with the brownies using a recipe.

The only cooking my daughter has done at Guides is roasting bananas with a Flake poked in the middle wrapped in tinfoil in the campfire. She loved doing that, and it's something we wouldn't do at home as we don't go camping and wouldn't make a fire in the garden. Likewise the toasted marshmallows - it's a special "guides" thing.

I've been in Guiding for 30 years and it has never started at 12

I was in my 20s when you started in guiding!

I definitely think the people who are determined that guides do proper cooking should volunteer to run the session and tidy up afterwards. I'm sure it was just meant to be a fun session not a home economics lesson. Much easier to learn proper cooking at home with proper equipment and without 20 other girls crowded into the kitchen.

If she enjoyed it yabu

If you're not prepared to volunteer to do a baking night with them yabu

If the hall doesn't have facilities for x number of girls to make cakes from scratch at the same time yabu

I was a Guide in 1972 at the age of 10 so it has been for 10 year olds for at least 45 years

Maybe I was a "special case" :o

I definitely didn't move at 10. I have a summer birthday. I also managed to go on 3 Summer holiday residential week long camps and I definitely wouldn't have gone at 8 as I wouldn't have started brownies until after the summer hols when I turned 8. So, must have gone at age 9, 10 and 11?

Guides have been 10+ since they started in 1910

If you were a Brownie at 12 (not saying you weren't) your leaders were in the wrong for not sending you up, and this is not normal and never has been. In exceptional cases girls may stay in units longer due to developmental issues, but generally they're with the section appropriate for their age