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A culinary duo dolls out cooking classes for kids.
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Helen Welsh and Dorothy Sheehan have discovered the cure for picky eaters. “If they make their own food,” Sheehan says, “they’ll eat their own food.”
That’s just one excellent reason to sign kids up at The Cracked Egg cooking school, where Sheehan and Welsh host a full plate of kids’ classes, summer day camps and birthday parties. Little chefs learn everything from making homemade ravioli to whipping up their own ice cream. Laughter is plentiful, and mistakes are encouraged, Welsh says. “That’s part of the fun—”
“—and how you learn,” adds Sheehan.
Welsh grew up in North Carolina loving cooking and French; she combined both with a five-month cooking course at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. Returning home, she opened a cooking school in her hometown of Winston-Salem, N.C., The Stocked Pot. She taught primarily French cooking and led student trips to Paris. Sheehan is an artist and decorative painter from Chicago (“She faux-finished the entire Gold Coast,” Welsh jokes), as well as an art teacher who has worked at the Curious Kids’ Museum in St. Joseph, Mich., Northeastern Illinois University and a Chicago YMCA.
“Kids and cooking is just such a natural (combination),” says Sheehan, who now lives in Sawyer, Mich. “They can’t wait to get into it.” Experience has taught Sheehan and Welsh that food fights aren’t likely to break out when kids are immersed in the fun of, say, making homemade ice cream. “We’ve found that the kids are so interested in cooking, they just want to do more stirring!” Welsh says. “They take the lessons seriously, and they’re so proud of their accomplishments.”
Sheehan adds that cooking is a fun way for them to learn math and organizational skills, teamwork, and science. “But they’re having such a good time,” she says, “they don’t even know they’re learning.”
The school features a roomy kitchen specially designed for teaching. Sherbert-orange walls and a chandelier – made of both crystal and painted, wooden ducks – give the school the whimsical aura of a posh kindergarten; a massive, butcher-block island with a five-burner cook top serves as classroom central. “We didn’t want it to be intimidating,” says Welsh, who also teaches the school’s adult courses. “We’re certainly not!”
Kids ages 6-9 and 10-14 can enjoy one-week cooking camps starting in mid-June (camps run for five days, three hours a day, with morning and afternoon sessions). The class adopts a theme – International, See the U.S.A., Prairie Life – that shapes the cooking and crafts kids will learn. Prairie Life might find them making their own butter and taking it home, then venturing outside to dye clothes with homemade vegetable dye.
“It’s hands on,” says Sheehan. “And we always eat what we make. That’s
the fun.”
Michigan City, Ind.
The Cracked Egg
2613 E. Hwy. 12
219-210-3920
crackedeggcooking.com
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