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I'm the Chef Too! is a monthly subscription box for kids (and their grown-up assistant) to learn STEAM-based concepts by way of cooking and baking. Each box includes one recipe, an activity booklet, specialty kitchen supplies, additional project ideas, and pre-measured dry ingredients. They are to be paired with a few additional provided-by-you ingredients and kitchen supplies to create an artful, edible masterpiece. Not only do children create, invent, design, engineer, and question their way through their cooking or baking adventure, they are also exposed to educational concepts through the box's themes, which cover geology, astronomy, oceanography, paleontology, and more. This subscription is meant for kids ages 4-14.
Today my 5-year-old daughter and I will be baking the Under the Sea Cakes Kit, for $36.95 per month.
The Cost: $36.95 per month, $32.95 for 3 months, $30.05 for 6 months, or $28.95 for 12 months. Free continental US shipping for all plans.
This box was sent to us at no cost for review. (Check out the editorial guidelines to learn more about how we review boxes.)
What's Inside The I'm the Chef Too Subscription Box?
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The I'm the Chef Too! box arrives with a sticker holding the front flap closed, and open lines that invite a little "to / from" indication if you plan to gift the box. Flip the box over and you'll see all enclosed ingredients listed so you can do a food sensitivity check before you even break the seal. Inside, all the prepackaged ingredients and instructions are packed neatly within a sheet of tissue paper.
The Literature
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The intro card for the Under the Sea Cakes theme lists out all the ingredients that are included, and those you'll need to provide. This gives you the chance to have them purchased and ready before you delve into baking. On the flip side of the card is a bonus activity that you can do with your child separately, outside the kitchen. (The box's age range is 4-14 years old, so of course the older the kid, the less help they'll need.) I was a little surprised to find that the items needed for the bonus project include LED lights and a battery pack—not something most households have lying around! These seem like the types of things you sign up for a kids STEM subscription to receive. Perhaps other families could have them on hand from a different box.
The other two cards give a notice that if your melting chocolates melted in the mail, no worries—they can be re-melted; and one with a food and safety warning for some of the components included.
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Here is the instructions card for making your cupcakes. Since we're using a cake mix, they're pretty straightforward, but two things stood out to me: first of all, the ingredients included aren't actually pre-measured! We were sent more than we needed. Secondly, that standard recipe measurement notations were not used. If you take a look at the third photo above, they indicate a "tablespoon" as "tbs," whereas it should read, "Tbsp" with a capital "T" and a "p" at the end. I stared at the card for a long time making sure I understood it. If we're using this box to teach our kids about cooking and baking, I think the notation should be correct.
The Kitchen Gadget of the Month
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I'm the Chef Too! sends one kitchen item per box for you to keep. For this one it's a set of four silicone cupcake liners. We already own some silicone cupcake liners but were happy to have some new colors added to our supply. We use them for more than just baking—we put dips and sauces in them to have with meals, we use them as dividers in my daughter's lunchbox, and more.
The Included, Pre-Measured Ingredients
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The base ingredients we were sent were cake mix, powdered sugar, marshmallows, and white chocolate melting chocolates. They were not, however, pre-measured. We were sent more than we needed, and the instructions told us how much to use. I can see how making the actual measurement with measuring cups would be a useful practice for a child. Since my daughter is young and needed adult help anyway, I decided to eyeball additional ingredient measurements so we could use up all the ingredients we were sent.
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These are the components that make the octopus come to life: blue and orange gel food coloring and candy eyes.
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Also included were two piping bags and one plastic tip.
Baking Our Under the Sea Cakes
Mixing the Batter
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On the day we set out to bake our octopus cupcakes, our oven malfunctioned, so we high-tailed it to grandma's house and found ourselves with additional adult helpers. It was a very fun group activity! It worked out that the included ingredients had some extra volume, because it turned out that we had more mouths to feed. My daughter was disappointed to find that the cake batter was for yellow cake, instead of the chocolate batter that was pictured on the Under the Sea Cakes kit page. But we made it work! She used a 1/4c measuring cup to fill the baking cups.
Making the Icing
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The icing recipe was for a basic buttercream. Delicious! As instructed, we divided it into two and used the provided food coloring to make some blue and some orange icing. I wish it had instructed us to create more blue icing than orange, because we later found ourselves with not enough blue and too much orange. We made it work—you'll see in a moment!
Creating the Decorative Octopi
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While the cupcakes cooled and waited to be iced, we melted the white chocolates with oil in the microwave, we dyed it orange with the rest of our provided food coloring, and we covered our marshmallows in the chocolate.
They looked so cute and funny with their eyeballs on! It took about 10 minutes for the melted chocolate to harden on the marshmallows.
Piecing the Cupcakes Together
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Lorelai knows that sometimes baking projects require some waiting, to let things cool before you ice them. We found that with the extra step of making the octopus heads, we didn't have much waiting left to do before the cupcakes were ready to be iced. I have used piping bags before and showed her some tips for how to manage icing the cupcakes on her own. I showed her the swirling motion the card recommended using, and advised her to squeeze the top of the piping bag so that the icing wouldn't come out the wrong end. She did great!
You can see in the second photo above that we didn't have quite enough blue icing to cover the last couple of cupcakes completely. But if you had made only 3 cupcakes as instructed, you would've had icing to spare! After finishing adding the blue "water" icing, I modeled how to create squiggly tentacles. She followed suit.
Our finished product turned out delightful! One of the 7 provided marshmallows got eaten as a baking snack, and our batter made 8 cupcakes, so we filled in some makeshift octopus heads with orange icing. They were cute for their own reasons! Flavor-wise, the cupcakes were great. We often bake from box mixes—these days you can get some quality flavors from a box—and the icing was simple and good. It's not often we treat ourselves to chocolate-covered marshmallows, and we really enjoyed those too.
Value - Was This Box Worth It?
The baker, pleased with her octopus cupcake.
The Cost: $36.95 per month, $32.95 for 3 months, $30.05 for 6 months, or $28.95 for 12 months. Free continental US shipping for all plans.
We had a lot of fun with I'm the Chef Too! This baking project would have been a huge undertaking had we not had most of the ingredients and the instructions provided for us. With those helpful aspects, it was still a big bake, but it was manageable. For $36.95 (+ free shipping), you're getting the clever, artful idea, the instructions, half the ingredients, and some bonus kitchen items. You're also getting the thrill of your child receiving mail to look forward to, which inside holds the promise of a project that's both educational and yummy. As for volume, our kit made 8 almost-complete cupcakes, which is significantly more than the 3 sea cakes that were promised. I think 8 is an appropriate amount—enough to make your efforts worth it, but not so much that you're bogged down with a house full of tons of cupcakes. For our family, this box is worth it!
To Wrap Up:
What worked? What didn't work?
As we worked our way through this box, we did have some notes. But most of our frustrations were felt by the adult helpers and did not impact my child's fun time with this subscription. We had an overall positive experience and happily try another I'm the Chef Too! box!
Pros:
- The recipe idea was really clever and an exciting endeavor.
- Not having to source all the ingredients was helpful.
- The instructions were easy to follow, even for someone at the young end of the age range.
- The finished product was really cute and delicious.
- We were sent enough ingredients to make more than the 3 promised sea cakes, which meant we could share the treat with others.
Cons:
- The product was not quite as marketed—they sent us a different flavor of cake than was pictured on the website.
- The recipe notations were not standard, which was confusing. This was an education opportunity missed.
- The bonus DIY project required equipment that most households might not have on hand.
Can you still get this box if you sign up today? No. While you can buy the Under the Sea Cakes kit as a one-time purchase from the I'm the Chef Too shop, subscribers who sign up in June can look forward to receiving Fudgy Fossil Dig brownie kit for July. See future months' previews here. Subscription kits ship out the first week of each month. Orders placed on or after the 1st will be processed in the following month’s shipment.
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