When I was growing up, I never worried about—or even knew about—the niceties of scooping and leveling flour: using a spoon or scoop to put flour into a measuring cup, then scraping the back edge of a knife over the cup’s top edge to remove any excess flour. It wasn’t until I was an adult reading baking books in earnest that found out how important this technique can be to accurately measuring flour. (Of course, serious bakers go a step further and weigh the flour.) But enough about technique. What’s more important is that scooping and leveling is fun for kids to do. Plus it’s another one of those kitchen activities that helps develop a slew of skills: fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, spacial awareness, to name a few of the usual candidates.
Carter has been scooping flour with a small metal kitchen scoop and leveling it with the back of a table knife since he was 3. In fact, that’s what we’re doing in the picture in this blog’s header, although these days I usually get brushed aside with an “I can do it myself, Mommy,” which, in the end, is the point.
