KidStir Subscription Box Review – September 2016

KidStir was created to help kids have a “happy and healthy food connection.” It is a monthly cooking kit with sending recipes, tools and fun food related activities for kids to learn from and create with adult supervision.

This box was sent to us for review purposes. (Check out the review process post to learn more about how we review boxes.)

The Subscription Box: KidStir

The Cost: $15.95 per month plus $3.95 shipping ($19.90 per month) with price breaks for longer prepaid subscriptions.

The Products: A monthly cooking kit including recipes, tools, activities, and more.

Ships to: US only

Check out all of our KidStir reviews and the Kids Subscription Box Directory!

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This month’s theme was “Bake Me Happy” so we had three different recipes to practice our baking skills. We also received a small whisk, the cute silicon puppy potholder, and 8 monkey tags to include on gifted baked goods.

KidStir includes the following in each subscription:

• 3 step-by-step recipes covering all food groups
• 2 kid-sized cooking tools and themed activity materials
• A digital and printed shopping list
• 3 fun games and puzzles
• An e-newsletter packed with recipes and printables
• 3 educational foodie pages
• Bonus with a prepaid 12 month subscription - A special cookbook binder to collect all your recipes

A printed card with the shopping list was included in the box. Most of the items are staples for us so limited shopping needed to be done. On the left side of the card is a link to the KidStir website which is fabulous! They have lots of great information and downloadable items there. Check it out!

Recipe #1: Go Bananas!

First we did the Go Bananas! Banana Bread. Each recipe comes with the printed instructions (typically with pictures too) and a fun activity related to the recipe. 

I downloaded this list of kitchen rules from the Kidstir website for my daughter and me to review prior to getting started.

The recipes were all pretty simple and straightforward as it should be when cooking with children. We pulled the ingredients, measured and used separate bowls for wet and dry ingredients. My daughter, Cira, is almost 7 years old and she needed assistance but was able to do a lot by herself.

Here is the finished product – both uncooked and then fully cooked and ready to eat! My daughter loves banana bread so she really enjoyed participating in this activity.

Recipe #2: Poppin' Popovers

The second recipe was Poppin’ Popovers and above is a photo of the ingredients needed to complete the recipe.

This recipe was easy and fun for Cira. She completed almost every step by herself.

The eggs, milk, salt and flour all went into one bowl which we transferred to a creamer so she could pour them into the muffin tin by herself.

Ta-da! These were super yummy and they all popped up too. We added chives from the garden. Success.

Recipe #3: Awesome Apple Crisp

The third recipe was the Awesome Apple Crisp. We love making easy crisp desserts but we usually use frozen blueberries with lots of lemon peel.

We gathered all the ingredients and then included a little something for Mama. ☺

Teaching Cira to use the apple corer and the knife was my favorite part. I kept a close eye on the cutting part but she did great and actually, much better than I expected. After peeling (done by me), coring (joint effort), and cutting (mostly done by Cira) the apples, we put them in an 8x8 pan.

Finally we mixed the topping ingredients (brown sugar, oats, flour, butter and cinnamon), topped the apples with the oat mixture and baked it for about 40 minutes.

Here is the finished product. We opted for ice cream on top rather than the whipping cream suggested by Kidstir since we like the hot and cold combination.

Verdict: Overall, KidStir is a great subscription. Here is what I liked about it:

1. It provided fun planned activities for a child (or children) and an adult
2. Cira participated more than usual in the cooking tasks which I think was due to this being “her” subscription
3. The box/activities could easily be used with multiple children
4. The recipes were easy and generally tasted pretty good
5. Kidstir website is great! There are lots more ideas and fun downloadables under their DIY tab

There are also a couple areas I feel could be improved upon:

1. There is too much sugar in the recipes. I decreased the sugar content in both the banana bread and the apple crisp and they both tasted fine. In fact, the crisp was still very sweet.
2. The recipes were good enough but could be much better. We might make the popovers again but probably not the bread or the crisp. I do appreciate that they keep things simple for kids though.

As for the value of this subscription, I feel like the $19.90 ($15.95 plus $3.95 shipping) is fair for what you get. The graphics are good, cardstock is used for the recipe cards, the two kitchen gadgets were decent quality, and the website is great. It doesn’t feel like Kidstir is trying to cut corners in any way.  Overall, we were happy with Kidstir and I think you would be too.

What do you think of KidStir?