We have been having lots of fun this season with all of our Kids Kitchen Summer Cooking Camps and it is a little bittersweet that the summer is almost over. Although, we are really looking forward to beginning our fall classes! Classes for fall are now open for registration. Check out the upcoming class schedule on our website to sign up your creative cook!
Throughout our summer cooking camps, one of the recipes we our students made were Summer Rolls, also known as Spring Rolls. This is a light and healthy Vietnamese-influenced rice paper roll filled with rice noodles and packed with plenty of fresh vegetables and herbs for flavor, texture, and lots of nutrients!
Our students seemed to thoroughly enjoyed this recipe, primarily because of how much fun it is to make! The rice 
paper is a unique foundation for our rolls because once it is dipped into warm water it becomes complete transparent and sticky. Kids Kitchen cooking classes encourage hands-on learning and active participation through each step of
our recipes. During this recipe, kids were exposed to a wide variety of vegetables, including lettuce, cucumbers, avocados, match stick carrots, green onion, cilantro, and bean sprouts. Some students were even introduced to certain ingredients for the first time! Our creative cooks chopped up their veggies first and then began to build their summer/spring rolls.
To make our Summer/Spring Rolls, each student briefly dipped their rice paper into a bowl of warm water and then laid it flat onto a plastic cutting board. Kids then placed a flat lettuce leaf onto the center of rice paper, acting as our first layer of ingredients. After the lettuce, students continued by neatly stacking a small bunch of noodles, cucumbers cut lengthwise, carrots, green onions, cilantro leaves, bean sprouts, and avocado slices on top of lettuce leaf. Students gently lifted up the top and bottom sides of rice paper and folded them over the ingredients.
Next, they picked up the right side of the rice paper, folded it over to the left side, sealed it tightly and rolled them closed. Meanwhile, selected students helped make our peanut dipping sauce. We substituted our peanut dipping sauce in classes with nut allergies for plain Hoisin sauce. Many of our students loved this recipe so much that they were asking for seconds and thirds! Summer/Spring Rolls are a fun way to allow kids to experience new flavors, foods, and textures that they may not be exposed to on a regular basis!
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