9 Children’s Books About Cooking for Aspiring Young Chefs
Tags: Childrens Books, Children, Baking, Cooking, Parenting

Does your kid love to cook? Is baking their favorite weekend activity? If you said yes, then they have something in common with the characters in these books. Their pages are filled with cooking adventures, and some even include recipes for you and your kids to try! So what are you waiting for? Let’s get cooking!

Love Sugar Magic #1: A Dash of Trouble

Love Sugar Magic #2: A Sprinkle of Spirits

Leonora Logroño’s family owns the most beloved bakery in Rose Hill, Texas, spending their days conjuring delicious cookies and cakes for any occasion. And no occasion is more important than the annual Dia de los Muertos festival. Leo hopes that this might be the year that she gets to help prepare for the big celebration — but, once again, she is told she’s too young. Sneaking out of school and down to the bakery, she discovers that her mother, aunt, and four older sisters have in fact been keeping a big secret: they’re brujas — witches of Mexican ancestry — who pour a little bit of sweet magic into everything that they bake. Leo knows that she has magical ability as well and is more determined than ever to join the family business.

Summer of a Thousand Pies

When Cady Bennett is sent to live with the aunt she didn’t even know she had in the quaint mountain town of Julian, she isn’t sure what to expect. Now she’s staying in her mother’s old room, exploring the countryside filled with apple orchards and pie shops, making friends, and working in Aunt Shell’s own pie shop — and soon, Cady starts to feel like she belongs. Then she finds out that Aunt Shell’s shop is failing. Saving the business and protecting the first place she’s ever really felt safe will take everything she’s learned and the help of all her new friends. But are there some things even the perfect pie just can’t fix?

One Hundred Spaghetti Strings

Since Steffy was little, she and her older sister, Nina, have lived with their beloved Auntie Gina. But when the girls’ dad comes home to live with them, everything changes. So Steffy does what she does best: She cooks her way through the hardest year of her life. Sometimes it feels like everything but the kitchen sink is being thrown at her — too many ingredients that don’t quite work. And all Steffy wants is for her family to be whole again. Can her recipes help bring them back together?

Bliss (Bliss #1)

A Dash of Magic (Bliss #2)

Bite-Sized Magic (Bliss #3)

Rosemary Bliss’s family has a secret. It’s the Bliss Cookery Booke — an ancient, leather-bound volume of enchanted recipes like Singing Gingersnaps. Rose and her siblings are supposed to keep the Cookery Booke locked away while their parents are out of town, but then a mysterious stranger shows up. “Aunt” Lily rides a motorcycle and also whips up exotic (but delicious) dishes for dinner. So Rose and her siblings experiment with just a couple of recipes from the forbidden Cookery Booke. A few Love Muffins and Cookies of Truth couldn’t cause too much trouble . . . could they?

Pixie Piper and the Matter of the Batter

Pixie Piper and her best friend, Gray, are off to Chuckling Goose Farm, where descendants of Mother Goose spend the summer learning to master their magic. With her new friends, Rain and Pip, she makes up baking rhymes, plays with her goose, Destiny, and learns how to bake magic wishing cakes. The farm seems safe, but when Pixie finds a shard of glass that belongs to Raveneece, her old enemy, she begins to worry that the worrisome Sinister Sister isn’t as banished as she’d hoped. With multigenerational characters, an emphasis on family, a powerful portrayal of grade-school friendships, and lots of poetry, this is a truly original fairy-tale retelling.

Little House Cookbook

With this visually stunning cookbook, you can learn how to make classic frontier dishes like corn dodgers, mincemeat pie, cracklings, and pulled molasses candy in your own modern kitchen. The book also includes excerpts from the beloved Little House series, fascinating and thoroughly researched historical context, and details about the cooking methods that pioneers like Ma Ingalls used, as well as illustrations by beloved artist Garth Williams and full-color photographs by Kathryn Elsesser. Food and prop styling by Ellen Jackson.

What other books should we add to this list? Tell us in the comments below!