Past bakes include heart-shaped cookies for Valentine's and Almond/oatmeal crisps!
As some of you may already know, I recently started volunteering as a pseudo baking "instructor" with adults who attend the St Andrew's Autism Centre. Every week we attempt simple recipes that can be made under an hour, including wash-up time - but because there aren't that many different things with very basic steps that can be finished in about 30 - 45 min (aside from cookies) I am starting to run out of ideas!
To add to the challenge - clients who participate in this class aren't able to perform all the steps independently and require a quite a bit of assistance from their coaches. A couple of them also very much prefer other activities to baking (such as sweeping the floor or wandering around the classroom). But most of them generally enjoy eating the fruits of their labour and that so far motivates me enough to continue with my weekly sessions. It's also hilarious when some of them stealthily walk past the trays of baked goods to sneak some into their mouths.
Because I am working with a very special group of individuals, I suppose it's only fair that I give them more time to warm up to this new activity :) I started doing this having idealistic visions of my clients baking on their own after a short while - but after a few sessions I am starting to understand why that is not very realistic. So far I don't find myself really imparting baking skills - my role is more akin to a facilitator of a fun activity, which provides opportunities for the clients to practise taking instructions, learn how to be disciplined in class etc. These are useful skills to acquire/ build up too, in a "life-skills" kind of way.
Though things didn't exactly turn out the way I had envisioned, it's still well and good for me - hopefully one or two of them will be inspired enough next time to want to seriously pick up baking in future! And besides - nobody said helping/ doing good (well) was going to be easy..
When baking these cookies, the coaches eventually got quite creative and started making faces on their heart-shaped cookies!
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