Kids can count on having fun with Debora Pearson’s “Cookie Count and Bake” set, which consists of a metal cookie sheet, 20 plastic cookie cutters in geometric and number shapes, four measuring spoons, and a recipe and activity book. The cookie cutters and measuring spoons are sturdy and easy to handle. The book has two features that all cookbooks should have: laminated pages to prevent staining and a spiral binding, which allows the book to lie flat while you’re following a recipe. However, this is not just a recipe book.

In addition to giving young children the pleasure of baking cookies, this book is meant to encourage them to learn about numbers and shapes. A number of activities are suggested: playing Concentration with numbers, creating quilts and objects out of cookie shapes, guessing numbers by feeling them inside a treasure chest, matching chocolate chips to numbers. While these and the other activities in the book are fun and educational, many more activities could have been included without adding any pages to the book. How? Cut down on the recipe instructions. Out of six recipes, five have almost identical instructions. Variations on the basic recipe could easily have been added in a few sentences, leaving several pages free for extensions of the existing activities or for new material.

The “Clean-up Fun” page near the end of the book is a clever way to get kids to be responsible as well as learn more about measuring and volumes. However, it might have been easier for kids to use the measuring spoons if the measurements on the handles had been written in a contrasting colour. It would also have been preferable if the measurements on the spoons had been in metric as well as imperial, given that the kit is designed for the Canadian as well as the American market. As usual, recipes have both metric and imperial measurements.

While the book’s learning activities are designed for children aged 3 to 7, using the cookie cutters will no doubt appeal to older children as well. After all, there is no age limit to the enjoyment of baking or eating cookies. I can vouch for that. The cookies were delicious!