Summer Camp Showcase: Garden Party Baking Camp

Emily Masters
Jul 13, 2022
3 min read

Updated: Oct 23

This year, I taught my first ever four-day, three-hour baking camp. With that length of time spent in the kitchen, I chose older kids, ages 8-12 as my students. What I thought would be long and hard, turned out to be so fun and rewarding. Keep reading to see all the things we made this week. Maybe you'll find something you can make, too.

Kids at baking camp hold colorful plates with Hummingbird Bundt cakes, smiling in a bright kitchen. Text: "Hummingbird Bundt Cakes."

Hummingbird Cake

What is Hummingbird Cake? If you're not from the South, you likely haven't heard of this delicious confection.

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Students at Garden Party Baking Camp got to make this classic Southern dessert…and only two of them didn’t like it. That felt like a win!

Ok, so maybe it isn't the most kid-friendly recipe. To really appreciate it, you have to be a fan of both carrot cake and banana bread because with Hummingbird Cake, you'll land somewhere in the middle.

You also have to be a fan of pecans! At Itty Bitty Bakers, we use only nut-free recipes so we had to omit them for our camp. But they definitely make the cake!

No one knows the exact origin of the recipe of the Hummingbird Cake. But, it's interesting! Read a summary about the mystery of it here.

For this camp, we took a traditional Hummingbird Cake recipe and used mini bundt cake pans. After baking, we topped them with cute flower cupcake toppers. The perfect treat for a day in the garden!

Kids at a baking camp, making and enjoying cheddar herb biscuits and lemonade. Bright kitchen, utensils, and herbs visible.

Cheddar Herb Drop Biscuits

At Itty Bitty Bakers, we like to break up our camp days with a savory recipe in between the sweets. So, our second day of Garden Party Baking Camp was all about herbs. We made

delicious Cheddar Herb Drop Biscuits and Rosemary Lemonade.

Here's the recipe we used, along with a photo of one of my students using a pastry brush to add a butter topping.

As you can see from the thumbs up, the students loved them.

Chocolate Cream Pie Garden Cups

On the third day, we made chocolate-covered strawberry "carrots" to go on top of our edible garden pudding cup.

Woman smiling, holding a wooden tray with six dessert cups wrapped in clear bags. Background: landscape painting, wooden cabinet, potted plant.

The recipe for Chocolate Cream Pie Garden Cups was a little on the easer side, so we had more time to work on our fairy gardens and painted stones (see below.

The kids loved this recipe and took them home wrapped in cute plastic bags and ribbon. Here's our intern Adeline with a full tray of the cups ready to head out the door with kids on the last day.

Marshmallow Flower Cupcakes

This recipe is a favorite of ours at Itty Bitty Bakers and we've taught it at many springtime baking classes. It's great for children of all ages and varying skill levels. For older students like the ones at Garden Party Baking Camp, arranging the cut marshmallows to look like specific flowers was a fun challenge. They got to exercise their creativity skills and loved showing off their final products.