Noah Akman was about four years old when he started baking. “Definitely before he could read,” recalls his mom, Katherine Lew. “One day, I got out our mixer to make a cake, and I think he just loved the sound and watching it go around.”
While many kids dabble in baking at a young age—cracking eggs, adding ingredients, licking spatulas—Noah’s interest was different. “He was baking completely on his own by first grade,” says Lew. “Once he could read, that was it.”
That passion for cooking and baking held strong for Noah, now a 14-year-old freshman in high school. To nourish his love of all things culinary, his parents sought out summer cooking programs. In early elementary school, he attended what he calls a “fun but easy” cooking camp put on by Taste Buds Box at the Landon School in Bethesda, where kids made cupcakes and quesadillas (though he was already experimenting with multi-layer cakes and soufflés at home). Another summer, he loved having the chance to work independently—as opposed to in traditional summer-camp groups—at Cookology in Arlington, which offers baking intensives and global-cuisine workshops. And last summer, before entering high school, he attended his favorite camp yet: Summer Culinary’s DC camp, which hosts students ages 12 to 17 to learn from chefs and experience line-cooking in professional kitchens.
“We’d learn what we were cooking that day, make lunch in the morning, eat it, then make dinner and dessert in the afternoon,” Noah says. The week culminated in a Chopped-style challenge in which students prepared three courses featuring a secret ingredient: sweet potato. Noah’s group served ceviche with sweet-potato chips, roasted pork loin with roasted sweet potatoes, and sweet-potato panna cotta with plum sauce and peach ice cream. “We didn’t win,” Noah says. “We tried to do too much on the dessert.”
He plans to attend Summer Culinary again this year, and in the meantime he bakes constantly for family and friends and posts his creations on Instagram @noahsgourmetbakes. He experiments with savory cooking too, often preparing dinner for his parents and younger brother. “Chicken piccata is a favorite,” he says. “I also love to make fresh pasta with different sauces.”
He’s not alone in his young cheffy ambitions. Thanks to the growing popularity of kid-favorite cooking shows, such as Is It Cake?, Junior Bake Off, and Chopped Junior, plus FoodTok, YouTube, and Instagram accounts, kids and teens are more interested than ever in the culinary arts. And now programs for aspiring young chefs abound in the Washington area—especially during summer.
Nine-year-old Ethan Presser first got into baking around age seven after seeing the show Nailed It. “It’s the one where all the bad bakers have to make this very detailed cake,” Ethan says. “I mean, if there was a kid Nailed It, I think I would’ve nailed it.”
Ethan’s mom, Lauren, says that while Ethan really likes to cook at home, she thought a professional chef might help him learn to slow down and focus—and maybe teach him some recipes that he could teach her. At eight years old, Ethan was mastering cookies, bread, and cupcakes at a camp at Sur La Table. The store—with outposts in Tysons, Pentagon Row, Old Town Alexandria, and North Bethesda—runs weekly programs for kids during holiday breaks as well as the summer. These days, Ethan says, his specialty is apple pancakes: “One of my friends liked it so much he asked for the recipe.”
Six-year-old Marin Benowitz and her nine-year-old brother, Isaac, sampled cooking camps at Sidwell Friends and Stone Ridge last summer. Their mom, Kwon, is a professional chef. “I knew cooking camps would be interesting for both of them—they’re always helping and asking questions when I’m cooking,” she says. “I thought it would be fun for them to see other kids cooking, too.”
Marin, who’s now in first grade, spent a week baking things like sugar cookies and bread from scratch at Stone Ridge, which Isaac reports was one of his favorite summer camps yet. “We made chicken pot pies, and I got to take two home,” he says. They both also enjoyed the Mad Food Science camp at Sidwell, where—grouped by age with their peers—Isaac says focaccia-making was a highlight.
In addition to teaching new recipes and honing techniques, the camps offer kids an opportunity to develop skills they need to be more independent in their home kitchens. Kwon Benowitz says Marin regularly whips up snacks, declining her mom’s offers to help, and in middle school, Noah ran a “Dinner Club’”with a friend, inviting a dozen classmates over for a multi-course plated meal that the two then-tweens cooked and served entirely on their own.
Though there was one part of the evening that required a little more assistance.
“The parents did help them clean up,” Noah’s mom, Katherine, says with a laugh. “But thankfully, Noah mostly does that himself now.”
Where to Get Cooking
These camps let kids and teens sauté and bake their way through summer
Burgundy Farm Summer Day Camp
location_on3700 Burgundy Rd., Alexandria
languageWebsite
Burgundy Farm’s 26-acre campus hosts cooking camps with Sticky Fingers, a national kids’ cooking school that runs programs throughout Northern Virginia. Weekly themes include “STEAM Cooking” and “Kids’ Cooking Showdown.”
Cookology
location_on4238 Wilson Blvd., Arlington
languageWebsite
The Ballston cooking school runs summer programs focused on baking, world cuisines, and American cooking for ages 8 to 17. For teens seeking more advanced instruction, the Metropolitan Culinary Arts Institute–a professional postsecondary culinary school housed inside Cookology–runs a weeklong program that offers a real taste of life on the line.
Landon Summer
location_on6101 Wilson Ln., Bethesda
languageWebsite
The Bethesda boys’ school hosts coed culinary camps run by Taste Buds Box, a kids’ cooking program owned by local chef Shavown Cox and her daughter Brittany Young, an educator. Camps include “Jr. Chef Week” and “Jr. Pastry Chef Week” for rising kindergartners through second-graders and third-through-sixth-graders, respectively.
Sidwell Summer
location_on3825 Wisconsin Ave., NW; 5100 Edgemoor Ln., Bethesda
languageWebsite
Sidwell offers weeklong cooking and baking programs for kids in kindergarten through fourth grade (Bethesda campus) and kindergarten through fifth grade (DC campus). This year’s themes include “Cooking Across Cultures” and “Is it Cake?”
Stone Ridge Summer Campus
location_on9101 Rockville Pike, Bethesda
languageWebsite
Half-day coed cooking camps for rising second-graders through eighth-graders run all summer on Stone Ridge’s campus; programs can be combined with afternoon sessions for a full camp day. Run by Tiny Chefs, weekly themes include “Cupcake Wars” and “All-American Road Trip.”
Summer Culinary
location_on1625 Eckington Pl., NE
languageWebsite
This national program’s DC camp will be hosted at Eckington’s Union Kitchen in summer 2026. Kids 12 to 17 are instructed by chefs in professional kitchens and prepare lunch and dinner each day.
Summer at Key
location_on534 Hillsmere Dr., Annapolis
languageWebsite
“Chocolicious,” “Asian Fusion,” “Cookie Craze,” “Bake the World a Better Place,” “Farm to Table,” and a series of themed “Cupcake Wars” are among the baking- and cooking-centric options for rising first-graders through eighth-graders at Deliciously Nutritious camps on the Key School’s Annapolis campus.
Sur La Table
location_onArlington, Alexandria, McLean, North Bethesda
languageWebsite
The culinary store’s Virginia and Bethesda outposts offer hands-on cooking workshops tailored to kids and teens, with programs designed for groups ages 7 to 11 and 12 to 17. Weekly half-day camps run over the summer as well as during holiday breaks.
This article appears in the February 2026 issue of Washingtonian.
