Kid's cooking project from Northbrook Community Nursery School

Northbrook Community Nursery School is so excited to share Teacher Buzz with the Patch community. Teacher Buzz is a blog written each month by one of our fabulous teachers. Our teachers use this opportunity to share with you their favorite things to do with preschoolers.

Use a favorite snack item in a different way!

This issue of Teacher Buzz is brought to you by Julie Crowe, who teaches the 4-day 3’s (Turtles) class. The children in the Turtle class really enjoyed eating FIG NEWTONS during our snack times together. They also loved acting out the tale of "The Giant Carrot" during our circle time. I chose two classroom favorites and combined them into one enrichment activity (recipe listed below).

The children loved cutting up their own FIG NEWTON cookies and adding them to the batter. We wondered as a class what would happen to the cookies during the baking process and were surprised that we could still see them intact after the cake was cut into pieces. Everyone enjoyed eating this as much as they enjoyed participating in this first cooking project.

FIG NEWTONS Carrot Cake
(We chose to omit the coconut and the powdered sugar glaze)

What You Need

1 pkg. (2-layer size) carrot cake mix
1 cup water
¾ cup cholesterol-free egg product
½ cup oil
15 FIG NEWTONS Fruit Chewy Cookies, chopped (about 1-1/2 cups)
½ cup BAKER'S ANGEL FLAKE Coconut
2 cups powdered sugar
3 Tbsp. orange juice

Make It

PREHEAT oven to 350°F. Place cake mix, water, egg product and oil in large bowl. Beat with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Stir in chopped cookies and coconut. Pour into greased 13x9-inch baking pan.

BAKE 25 to 28 min. or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely.

MIX powdered sugar and orange juice until well blended. Drizzle over cake. Cut into 16 pieces to serve.