A birthday cake recipe is told as a fairy tale with three tasks: the mixing, the baking and the waiting. Write it.Angle: the hardest task is the third. Nobody may touch the cake until it is cool.
A baker sniffs the cake batter, pulls a face, and has until the oven is hot to fix it. Write the fix.Angle: what is wrong, what is in the cupboard, and does it work?
Report a recipe for scones as kitchen news, with a headline.First line: Twelve scones were pulled from an oven at ten this morning. All are doing well.
A banana bread recipe is a rescue story: three bananas nobody wanted are saved from the fruit bowl. Write it.First line: They were brown, they were soft, and they were exactly what she needed.
A birthday cake recipe is told as a fairy tale with three tasks: the mixing, the baking and the waiting. Write it.Angle: the hardest task is the third. Nobody may touch the cake until it is cool.
A cupcake recipe is passed down a line of friends by whisper. Write the recipe that comes out of the far end, and what gets baked.Angle: fold becomes hold, whisk becomes risk. Does anyone eat the result?
A muffin recipe becomes a detective story: something is missing from the batter, and the baker must work out what. Write the case.Angle: the clues are in the mixing bowl. Is it the sugar, the salt or the egg still on the counter?
Draw a treasure map of the kitchen in words: a baking recipe with a dotted line from the pantry to the oven.Angle: flour is three steps east. The eggs are guarded by a cold door. X marks the pan.
Give a cake recipe as the rules of a game: how to start, whose turn it is, and how you know you have won.First line: A game for one baker and one oven. The eggs go first.
Keep a baker's diary for one day of bread, with a new entry each time the dough is checked.First line: Eight o'clock. Mixed it. It looks like nothing. I have been told to trust it.
Report a recipe for scones as kitchen news, with a headline.First line: Twelve scones were pulled from an oven at ten this morning. All are doing well.
Set out a baking recipe as a rocket launch countdown, from ten down to the oven door closing.Angle: ten is the apron. One is the tray going in. What goes wrong at four?
Tell a bread recipe as a bedtime story in which the dough is the one being put to bed.Angle: a warm spot, a cloth pulled over, and a baker who keeps peeking to see if it has grown.
Tell a pie recipe as a letter from the person who taught you to bake it.First line: You will think the crust is too dry. It is not. Keep going.
Turn a baking recipe into a poem with one line for each step and no line longer than six words.Angle: Crack. Stir. Pour. Then let the lines grow longer while the cake is in the oven.
Write a baking recipe as a conversation between a new baker and a recipe book that answers back.First line: Fold, said the book. Fold what, said I. Fold gently, said the book, which did not help.
Write the recipe a baker would give if every amount had to be a comparison and none could be a number.Angle: butter the size of a walnut, flour like a snowdrift, milk until it looks like paint.
Write the recipe for the bake you know best as a sports commentary, called live from the counter.First line: The butter is in, the sugar is in, and here comes the whisk.
The cake that sank 15
A baker forgets the cupcakes are in the oven. Write the moment the smell reaches the next room.First line: It started as a good smell, and then it was too much of a good smell.
A baker sniffs the cake batter, pulls a face, and has until the oven is hot to fix it. Write the fix.Angle: what is wrong, what is in the cupboard, and does it work?
A birthday cake slides off its plate on the way from the kitchen to the table. Write the two seconds.Angle: slow them down. Who gasps, who lunges, and how much of the cake is saved?
A pie comes out of the oven with most of its filling on the outside. Write how the baker renames it.Angle: give the new dessert a name, a story and one person who asks for seconds.
The baker ices a name on a birthday cake and runs out of room after the fourth letter. Write the rescue.Angle: squeeze the rest in, start again, or decide the short name is the name now.
The baking pan was too small, and the batter knew it before the baker did. Write what happens in the oven.Angle: over the edge, onto the oven floor, and a smell that tells the whole house.
The cake came out of the oven with a crater in the middle. Write what the baker does next.Angle: fill it with fruit, flip it over, or call it a volcano cake and serve it proudly.
The cake looks perfect and nobody has cut it yet. Write the thoughts of the baker, who knows what is wrong inside.First line: I smiled at everyone and counted the seconds until the knife.
Salt went into the cookie dough where the sugar should have gone. Write the first bite, and the baker's face.Angle: nobody says anything for three chews. Who speaks first, and is it kind?
Tell the story of a loaf of bread that would not rise, first as the baker and then as the loaf.Angle: the baker blames the kitchen. The loaf has another explanation.
Tell the story of the cookies that spread into one giant cookie on the baking tray.Angle: a disaster or an invention? Write how it gets cut up and who claims the middle.
Two bakers follow the same cake recipe side by side, and only one cake rises. Write their conversation.Angle: they go back through every step aloud. Where do the two stories part?
Write a baking disaster as an apology letter from the cake that sank.First line: I want you to know I was trying to rise the whole time.
Write a baking failure as a numbered list of lessons, by a baker who has now learned every one the hard way.First line: One. The timer is not a suggestion.
Write the label a museum would put beside your worst bake if it were on display.First line: Burnt on one side, raw on the other. Flour, effort and hope. On loan from the baker.
A bake sale 15
A customer at the bake sale asks which bake is best, and the seller baked only one of them. Write the answer.First line: They are all good, I said, and moved my muffins an inch toward her.
A very small child wants a cookie from the bake sale and has a button, a leaf and one coin. Write the sale.First line: She set them on the table in a row and waited for my answer.
The bake sale has sold out in half an hour, and people are still lining up. Write what the sellers do.Angle: take orders, take names, send someone home to bake. Or sell the recipe.
Describe a bake sale table from one end to the other, so that a reader could choose without seeing it.Angle: go left to right. Give each plate one detail: a crack, a shine, a crooked cherry.
Follow one cupcake from the bake sale table to wherever it is eaten, and write the trip.Angle: a park bench, a bus, a desk. Who gets the other half?
It is ten minutes before the bake sale opens. Write the scene behind the table.Angle: a tablecloth that will not lie flat, a cash box with no change, a lemon cake arriving late.
Persuade your class to hold a bake sale. Say what it would raise money for and why baking is the way.Angle: three reasons, then the objection you expect and your reply to it.
Plan a bake sale in writing: who bakes what, who sells, who counts, who cleans up.Angle: a list with a name beside each job. Which job has nobody wanted yet?
Rain starts on the morning of an outdoor bake sale. Write how the bakers save the cakes.Angle: umbrellas, a doorway, a car with the back open. Does the sale go on?
Two friends are pricing the bakes for a bake sale and cannot agree. Write the argument.Angle: one wants everything to cost the same. The other baked the big cake and disagrees.
Write a bake sale as the cash box sees it: the hands, the coins, the voices deciding.First line: I open, I shut, and in between I hear every reason for choosing the lemon one.
Write a thank-you note to someone who baked for the bake sale and left no name on the plate.Angle: describe the bake so well that its baker will know the note is meant for them.
Write about a first bake sale as the helper who carried the trays and was told not to tilt them.First line: I walked the whole way like someone carrying a sleeping cat.
Write about the one bake nobody bought at the bake sale, and what becomes of it afterward.Angle: carried home, shared on the steps, or bought at the last minute by someone kind.
Write the sign for a bake sale table so that nobody can walk past without stopping.Angle: what is for sale, what the money is for, and one line that makes people smile.
How to make it 15
Explain how to bake your favorite thing to someone who has never turned on an oven.Angle: say where an adult helps. Then first, next, after that, and how to tell it is done.
Explain how to roll out dough to someone holding a rolling pin for the first time.Angle: flour on the counter first. Then say what to do when the dough sticks or tears.
Explain how to wait while something bakes. Write it as real instructions.Angle: step one, set the timer. Step two, do not stand at the oven door. What is step three?
Explain how you tell when a bake is done, without looking at a recipe.Angle: what you see, what you smell, what you hear. Which sign do you trust most?
Explain how you would teach a friend to bake the one thing you can make without looking anything up.Angle: what you show, what you let them do, and when you keep your hands behind your back.
Write a how-to for decorating a cake when the cupboard holds only three things to decorate it with.Angle: name the three. Say where each goes and what to do when the cake still looks bare.
Write how to crack an egg for baking, in as many small steps as it really takes.Angle: the tap, the thumbs, the bit of shell. Most writers skip the hard part. Do not.
Write how to decide what to bake when the cupboard has flour, two eggs and not much else.Angle: list what is there. Cross out what cannot be made. What is left?
Write how to follow a baking recipe, for someone who always skips ahead.First line: Read all of it first. Yes, all of it. I will wait.
Write how to get ready to bake, before a single ingredient is touched.Angle: hands, apron, the recipe read to the end, everything set out. Why does the order matter?
Write how to knead dough, for someone who thinks kneading means stirring.Angle: push, fold, turn. Say how the dough feels at the start and how you know to stop.
Write how to make bread in exactly five steps, and then write the step you had to leave out.Angle: which step hurt to cut? Say why a new baker would miss it.
Write how to measure flour for baking, for a younger child who thinks a cup means any cup.First line: Not the mug with the cat on it. This one, with the line.
Write instructions for frosting a cupcake, for a reader who cannot see your hands.Angle: where the knife starts, which way it turns, and when to stop fussing.
Write the steps for cleaning up after baking, in the order that makes it fastest.Angle: the bowl before it dries, the flour on the floor, the one spoon nobody can find.
How it works
A writer who has baked once, burnt something once or only watched through the oven door has enough for these baking writing prompts. Many begin at the moment a kitchen goes a little wrong.
Read the full guide
Writing prompts about baking gone wrong
Fifteen prompts start from a failure: a crater in the middle of a cake, salt in the cookie dough, a loaf that stayed flat. A sunk cake makes a better story than a perfect one, because somebody has to decide what happens next.
A recipe told as a story
A recipe is already in order, so the plot is free. These prompts change the teller. A day of bread becomes a baker's diary, a cake becomes the rules of a game, and banana bread becomes the rescue of three brown bananas from the fruit bowl.
Put the smell in early. In a kitchen it reaches the reader before anything else does.
In a how-to, give each step one verb: crack, fold, pour, wait.
Questions and answers
What is a good baking writing prompt?
One with a problem in it. The cookies have spread into one giant cookie on the baking tray: write how it gets cut up and who claims the middle. Or let a new baker argue with a recipe book that answers back.
What are good writing prompts for baking with a class?
The bake sale ones. A class can letter the sign for the table, plan who bakes, sells, counts and cleans up, or argue over prices. Afterward: what became of the one bake nobody bought.
How do you write a recipe as a story?
Keep the steps in order and change who tells them, or how. Put the dough to bed like a child, call the mixing like a sports match, or send the recipe down a line of friends by whisper.
Are these baking writing prompts for kids?
Yes. Each is answered on paper, from memory or from imagination. None is a recipe to cook from, and one how-to asks the writer to say where an adult helps.