Title: Bake through the Bible—20 cooking activities to explore Bible truths with your child
Author: Susie Bentley-Taylor and Bekah Moore
Useful for: parents and group leaders for children 3-10ish looking for fun, tasty, cooking activities to share Bible stories
Best bit: lots of interesting, fun and tasty recipes, a good mix of Bible stories, and a quality book with a strong design and high-quality paper.
Worst bit: no traditional recipes and sometimes tenuous links with Bible stories so as to cover Bible stories ‘through the Bible’
Price: RRP £8.99 Available from the publisher for £7.46 or even less on Amazon.
I really like baking and so do my children (they were 2 and 4 when we first used this book), so this has been a fun and easy title to review. They often get it out of the bookshelf from among story books and look for a recipe they’d like to make. The lovely food photos give them a good idea of what we’re aiming at and the instructions are illustrated in a way which helps them navigate the method.
Each Bible story comes with one recipe, with the stories working through the Bible (as you might expect!) giving a theological overview of the Bible. There are 20 stories, 10 from the old and 10 from the new testament. There’s a retold version of the story to use as well as questions to chat about together. The book also includes a prayer to read, which would be helpful to some people although we’re a bit more into freestyle prayers.
I was a bit disappointed not to find some traditional Jewish recipes, more things connected with Passover, Purim etc. But the recipes which are there are new (to use at least) and good fun.
We loved the tuna wraps made by rolling normal bread flat and the heart biscuits about God making our hearts clean. As part of our weekly Shabbat meal, we say a passage from Psalm 24:3, 4 about only those with clean hands and pure hearts meeting with God before we wash our hands with water and ask Jesus to make our hearts clean, so this bake linked in with that really nicely. I did find the first time we made them, the biscuits were yummy but ENORMOUS especially for children, with three layers of biscuit each 5mm thick. The second time I made them, I used the heart-shaped cutter for the outside shape and cut a small circle out of each side to show the filling, which I also adapted to white and dark chocolate.
I would recommend this book to parents who like to bake with their children, and people running groups where they could cook but aren’t sure how to make it work in with the story. I think it would work well in many Messy Church sessions, for example. I would also add, that although the recipes worked with my children, older children would be able to do more of it themselves, making the book work up to age 10 nicely.
I also found having made the bake and linked it with the story, the next time I baked it, it remind me of the story again, and gave me another moment to reflect and let God speak to me. God speaking through baking. What could be better?
There is also a Christmas version of this book found here.