The Great Gunnison Baking Club serves up cookies and community

Though lacking the grand tent and summer heat of its reality TV namesake, The Great British Baking Show, The Great Gunnison Baking Club offers an exciting and delicious monthly club for Gunnison middle and high school students.​

Oct. 14 was the second monthly meeting of The Great Gunnison Baking Club. Keelin MacCarthy, youth and family services coordinator at Gunnison County Library, started the club to help kids get into the library.

“The point of doing this is to get teens and tweens to come to the library and actually see what we have to offer,” said MacCarthy. “A lot of kids don't know all of the resources we offer, such as cookbooks. They can also learn about the other programming that we offer while they're here. So it's a way to get people to come into the building to utilize it because it's a community resource.”

MacCarthy saw cooking and baking programs gain success at other libraries, which inspired her to start The Great Gunnison Baking Club. Plus, it’s a great excuse to bake, which she does a lot of in her spare time.

The Great Gunnison Baking Club meets one Wednesday a month at 2 p.m. in the Library Kitchen Community Room. The club welcomes both experienced and brand-new bakers.

At the first club meeting, the participants made funfetti cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. This month, the three attending eighth grade students, Keira Smith, Leslie Diaz, and Mic McGrath, were tasked with preparing pumpkin drop cookies with maple icing. MacCarthy added on a bonus challenge: asking them to double the recipe.

The three students worked as a team. They lined baking sheets with parchment and worked together to measure and mix the flour, leaveners, salt, and spices. They mixed the wet ingredients, debated whether dark or light brown sugar is better, cracked eggs with no trace of shell in the batter, and learned about the process of making vanilla extract. Though a couple of students were dismayed by the mathematical task of doubling measurements, they successfully doubled and measured all ingredients.

They scooped rounded tablespoon-sized portions onto baking trays, keeping the dough tall and rounded so the cookies would hold their shape and prevent burning. While waiting for the cookies to bake, they prepared the icing and learned the importance of completely mixing the butter to prevent clumping. They added powdered sugar and maple syrup to make the icing delicious and silky.

The team worked together to ice the cookies, with MacCarthy cautioning them against putting too much icing, as it could mess with the ratio and might not leave enough icing for every cookie.

They discussed future baking club recipes and everything they learned that day while munching on their pumpkin cookies. They recalled learning a new, practical way to use math, the importance of ratios, and teamwork. However, they decided they would work a little harder on teamwork at the next meeting. Most importantly, they had fun baking together and got to take some delicious cookies home to share with their friends and family.