There are so many benefits to your kids learning how to cook at a young age. They’re able to help you in the kitchen, develop skills like collaboration, improve their math and science skills, express their creative side, and understand how to make fresh ingredients into delicious and nutritious meals. So whether your child has expressed an interest in cooking and baking or you’re looking for a new activity for them to try, you have many kids cooking classes in and around the Mesa area to choose from. Here are five awesome places in the area to try.

Classic Cooking Academy

“Young girl eating ingredients from a mixing bowl” licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Flickr by shixart1985

Classic Cooking Academy is a full-service cooking school that offers workshops and multi-week training programs for both kids and adults. Children and teens ages 8 and up can enroll in six-week after-school courses that teach them important cooking skills, kitchen cleanliness and organization, food prep, and basic nutrition. And since each week’s class builds off of the skills learned in the previous week’s class, your children get to challenge themselves each time and feel a sense of accomplishment as their skills keep improving.

What’s more, the menus for the classes change, so your kids are always cooking something new. Plus, they’ll be making dishes inspired by meals and flavors from around the world. This can help them expand their palate and explore foods they may not have tried otherwise. In addition to after-school cooking courses, you can sign your kids up for one-off baking classes as well as holiday break camps and summer break camps that consist of multiple classes in a single week to get the kids out of the house.

Classic Cooking Academy is located at 10411 E. MacDowell Mountain Ranch Road in nearby Scottsdale.

Sur la Table

Sur la Table, the quality cooking ware seller, also offers cooking and baking workshops for kids, teens, and adults as well as family-style workshops, meaning everyone can join for a fun, collaborative class that ends in trying your delicious creation, like holiday-themed sweet treats. You can sign your kids up for classes in kitchen basics and French cooking. Or, if your child is 14 years old and up, they can join you for any of the adult workshops with topics like homemade pasta, doughnuts, cooking in cast iron, and global cuisines, like Thai, Indian, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

You can also sign up for online cooking classes through their website. With professional chefs at the helm, you and your kids can follow along to a live 90 to 120-minute lesson and cook a delicious dish. Buy the ingredients on your shopping list ahead of time, get out your gear, and log into the Zoom class. This option is good for shier kids who aren’t quite ready to go to class alone, for younger kids who have shorter attention spans, or as a cost-effective introduction to kids cooking classes since these start at $29 per household.

There are a few Sur la Table locations in the area that offer workshops, so check each location’s calendar for class schedules.

Sweet Basil Gourmet

Sweet Basil Gourmet is a local cooking school and cookware seller in Scottsdale that offers a wide variety of immersive classes for kids, families, and adults. You can take a family baking or dessert decorating class to see if your children would be interested in taking classes on their own. These bonding experiences have you making holiday treats like gingerbread houses, s’mores casserole, and delicious Italian pasta, among many other dishes. If your kids are ready to get into a class on their own, you can sign them up for a single workshop or the Summer Cook Camp series.

You can find Sweet Basil Gourmet at 10749 N. Scottsdale Road Suite 101 in nearby Scottsdale.

L’Academie School of Baking and Cooking

L’Academie School of Baking and Cooking offers workshops on cooking and baking basics, bread making, and pastry arts. In addition to family workshops, they allow students under 18 to join in their classes as long as they have a parent with them. However, the classes may be a bit too challenging for young children, so it might be best to take children 13 and up to these classes. L’Academie’s workshops are 2 to 3 hours long and have you and your cooking partner serving up holiday dishes, homemade pies, a variety of artisan breads, pastas, and much more.

This location also hosts single-family workshops where you and your kids can have an instructor all to yourselves as you learn a few delicious recipes. These events are by appointment only and typically last an hour. You can also book your little chef’s birthday party with L’Academie for a party they and their friends will never forget. These events are also by appointment only and are 3 hours of cooking and baking fun for kids and teens.

You can find this cooking school at 3244 E. Guadalupe Road Suite 107 in nearby Gilbert.

Mix Cooking School

Mix Cooking School offers cooking classes for all ages and lives by the motto “learn, practice, eat.” In every class, you and your children learn how the ingredients go together, the history and culture of each dish, and how to properly use different techniques and tools. Then, you get to put that knowledge into practice right away with the guided instruction of an experienced chef. Finally, you get to eat your creations to celebrate your efforts.

This school offers a wide variety of workshops that focus on Latin cuisine (and many others), desserts like macarons and cake pops, Italian pastas, and much more. Most of their classes are open to children 10 and up with an accompanying adult cooking partner, but this school also hosts kids-only workshops for children ages 8 and up and family cooking and baking events. And many of the kids’ workshops are drop-off only, meaning you can use the 2 to 3-hour timeframe to do your own thing, like take a couples’ class at the school.

Mix Cooking School is located at 4995 S. Alma School Road in nearby Chandler. At Crème de la Crème of Mesa, we incorporate cooking and nutritional lessons into our curriculum thanks to our hands-on Chef It Up lessons. Paired with one of these other cooking classes, your kids can further improve their cooking skills and expand their palates. Contact us to learn more about how our whole-child curriculum can help your child thrive.