Recipes are always calling for different types of sugars—regular white sugar, brown sugar, and confectioner’s sugar are the most common, but others like sanding sugar, maple sugar, and raw sugar show up from time to time. What’s the difference? How do these different sugars affect the recipes in which they are used? Keep reading to find out:

Regular White Sugar

This is what most people think of when they hear the word “sugar”: fine white sand-like granules that are perfect for dissolving in a cup of coffee or mixing into cookie batter. Any time you see a recipe calling for “sugar” without offering any further explanation, this is what they’re expecting you to use.

Confectioner’s Sugar (Powdered Sugar)

Confectioner’s sugar is white and powdery. While mostly sugar, it includes a small amount of added cornstarch to make sure it doesn’t end up caking in the bag. It’s often used in (surprise!) confections, and it can be used to make icing for cakes. It’s also good for making whipped cream.

You don’t have to worry about trying to find a better variety of confectioner’s sugar—the bags you find in the supermarket are actually of the highest quality commonly available. There are a few less-fine varieties often used by industrial baking companies.

Brown Sugar

Unlike white sugar, brown sugar still contains molasses syrup. This gives it its characteristic flavor, but can also lead to clumping (which any child will tell you is actually a good thing, since you can easily grab a clump and eat it straight!). This is why it’s important to pack brown sugar before using it in a recipe.

Light brown sugar has a lighter molasses flavor and is perfect for glazes and butterscotch. Dark brown sugar is crucial for baked beans and gingerbread. Either variety should work well for a recipe that doesn’t specify light or dark, so just use whatever you prefer.

Coarse Sugar

Coarse sugars have much larger crystals than those of regular sugar. These crystals are also stronger, preventing them from breaking down into fructose and glucose as easily as other sugars. This makes them ideal for making liquors, fondants, and some confections, as well as making edible art. One type, known as sanding sugar, is particularly good for cake decorating—throw it on top of a frosted cake to make it glitter. This can make for a very dramatic cake presentation, especially when reflecting the candles of birthday cakes.

Raw Sugar (Turbinado Sugar, Sugar in the Raw)

A favorite amongst people looking to cut down on their intake of processed foods, raw sugar tends to fall somewhere between white, brown, and coarse sugars. Some of the molasses go away, but some remain within the large crystals. This gives it a lighter molasses taste than light brown sugar, but it’s still present.

Raw sugar is used mainly to sweeten tea, coffee, and other drinks, imparting a slight hint of brown sugar flavoring without overwhelming the taste of the drink itself.

Other Sugars

There are various specialty sugars suited to specific needs or regional tastes. Examples include the extra fine-grained fruit sugars, the deep brown, dark-flavored Muscovado brown sugar preferred by British people, and the incredibly sweet and flavorful maple sugar popular for confections in New England and eastern Canada. If you haven’t given these a try, it might be worth the extra effort to track them down!

Everyone knows that the icing is the best part of the cake! But there are a lot of options out there, and it can sometimes be difficult to keep them all straight. Here’s a list of the most popular types of icing and their most common uses:

Icing

Icing is a blanket term used to refer to many types of sweet glaze, including frosting, fondant and more. It’s essentially any glaze in which sugar is a primary ingredient, generally with a liquid, such as water, milk, or egg whites, added to achieve the desired consistency.

Buttercream Frosting (Butter Icing, Butter Cream, Mock Cream)

There are many types of buttercream frosting, but the basic definition is an icing in which butter or a similar fat (like margarine or shortening) is creamed with sugar. Simple buttercream frosting (confectioner’s sugar and butter) is the most common choice for birthday cakes, and for good reason! It’s easy to spread and can hold small shapes well, and it is especially good for creating the frilly edges seen on many cakes. It’s also the sweetest of the buttercreams commonly available on the market.

Other options include the more complicated French, Swiss, and Italian meringue buttercreams (made with egg whites to create a stiff, easy-to-shape frosting), French buttercream (made with egg yolks for a rich taste), rolled buttercream (similar to rolled fondant, below, but more fragile and better suited to cookies than cakes), and custard-based buttercream (great for fillings).

Rolled Fondant (Fondant Icing)

Rolled fondant is icing with glycerin and gelatin added to give it an easy-to-work consistency. It is kneaded, rolled out, and lowered over a cake like and upside-down pie crust. It has a nice shine to it and because it’s all one piece, it has an extremely smooth, uniform appearance. This makes it a favorite for wedding cake solutions.

Marzipan

Marzipan is a combination of almond meal and sugar. It is extremely moldable and is often used to create edible sculptures, but it can also be rolled out and draped over a cake like fondant. If a layer of marzipan is placed over the cake before the fondant is added it becomes airtight and adds a lot to the cake’s shelf life. If you haven’t used it before, be forewarned that marzipan has a strong almond flavor and that not everyone will enjoy it—but for those who do, it’s a delicious treat that allows for a lot of creativity.

Royal Icing

This is an extremely hard icing, especially once it has set. Egg whites are used in order to give it a strong consistency. It’s excellent for creating decorations or for attaching other decorations to a base, and it is a crucial element in making a gingerbread house.

Ganache

Made by combining cream or butter with chocolate, ganache can be made in varying consistencies to function similar to a buttercream as a stiff decorating icing, or as a glaze. It can even be used to make chocolate truffles. It is most commonly made with semi-sweet chocolate, but it can be made with dark or white chocolate as well.

We how this information is useful and that you find the right kind of frosting for your celebration. In the end the important thing is to make sure everyone gets to have a fun time.

Using the right tool for the job can make all the difference between easy success and a complete disaster. This is particularly true in baking, but many beginning bakers will simply grab the closest bag of flour and use it without bothering to read what it is first. As a result, they end up with flat bread or unpleasantly heavy cakes. If you want to get it right the first time, read on:

All-Purpose Flour

Most brands of all-purpose flour are a combination of soft and hard wheat varieties, creating baked goods with a moderate texture. Some brands only use soft wheat, which results in a lighter texture and lower protein content but they will still work fine for most recipes calling for all-purpose flour.

As the name suggests, all-purpose flour works for a wide variety of food, including many types of bread, cakes, cookies, and pastries.

Cake Flour

Cake flour is as soft as flour gets: it’s made entirely from soft wheat, which is then chlorinated in order to make it even softer. This results in delicately textured goods that are less likely to collapse during baking. It’s especially useful for making sure that baked goods that are extremely high in sugar still manage to rise successfully. Use it for cakes, cupcakes, muffins, and certain breads.

Bread Flour

Bread flour is made entirely from hard, high-gluten wheat. This gives it a lot of strength and body, making it especially good for yeast bread. It can work with certain pastry recipes as well.

Pastry Flour (Cookie Flour)

This is similar to cake flour but contains slightly more protein. This makes it excellent for creating that “tender flaky crust” that so many commercials advertise for their company’s baked goods. It’s a perfect choice for most pastries and cookies, as well as biscuits and pie crusts. Don’t use it for anything that requires real strength and body, though, as it will tend to fall apart.

This can be tough to find; try local bakeries and health food stores. If you can’t find any there, try buying some online or through mail order.

Self-Rising Flour

This flour comes with salt and baking powder already added, allowing you to skip the steps of adding those ingredients. However, this is only useful for recipes that call for the exact same ratio of baking powder and salt that the manufacturer has included. Also keep in mind that baking powder will lose its potency long before the flour expires.

Other Flours

There are several other specialty flours on the market, catering to different needs and tastes. Whole wheat flour is much healthier than white flour, but it has less gluten, making it necessary to mix it with white flours when making bread. Corn flour is used for tortillas, rice flour for making gluten-free baked goods and potato flour can make flavorful breads. Nut flours are high in protein and can be extremely moist and rich making excellent cakes (but keep in mind that they pack enough calories to make most dieters swoon from terror).

There are many other flour types out there, each well-suited to its specialty. Always be sure to use the right flour for the job in order to achieve the best possible results while having fun and being creative.

If you’re confident in your ability to make a good batch of cupcakes or cookies and—whether it’s for a party, a holiday, or your own pleasure—you’re looking to spice up the taste and presentation a bit. Here are a few easy things you can try out without a culinary school degree:

Add Fillings

This can work for any type of baked goods that are big enough, but cakes and cupcakes are the most popular choice. For cupcakes, simply cut off the top and carve out a hole in the bottom part. Fill the empty space with the filling of your choice—preserves, frosting, pie filling, or anything else you think might taste good (and that won’t run all over the place when someone bites into it)—and put the top back on. You can then add frosting and decorations as usual in order to make an even more extravagant treat.

For cakes, simply bake two or more layers. Put a ring of stiff frosting around the rim of the base layer to act as both glue and dam, to keep the filling inside and the cake held together. Afterwards, simply pour or spread the filling within the ring (don’t try to add too much, or else it will push through the frosting and squeeze out the edges when you place the next layer on top). If you have a really stiff filling—say you have a lot of that frosting and, like me, you believe no cake has ever had too much frosting—you can get sinfully hedonistic. Turn the upper layer of the cake upside down, carve out a shallow hollow in the bottom, and fill that with more frosting before placing it on top of the prepared bottom layer. Remember to be careful when transferring a slice from cake to plate!

Cookie Pops

This is a great choice for a creative presentation. After placing cookie batter on a baking sheet, insert a popsicle stick into the side of each cookie (note that this will take up a lot of extra space on the sheet, so you won’t be able to bake as much in a given batch). When they’re finished, you’ll be able to lift them on their sticks, allowing you to make unique three-dimensional arrangements with your cookies.

You can do almost anything with these, especially with the addition of frosting and toppings. Turn them into flowers to make an edible bouquet; make multicolored pinwheels; bake them in seasonal shapes to make a dramatic stand-up holiday display. Any of these can make excellent table décor, or you can give away small batches as party favors.

Dips

This is great idea for bars and brownies. It works best with chocolate or chocolate-like substances; simply melt down some semisweet chocolate, white chocolate, butterscotch chips, or anything along those lines in a double boiler. (If you don’t have a double boiler, you can simulate one with two saucepans. Boil water in a large saucepan. Place the ingredient you want to melt in a smaller saucepan, and then float the small saucepan in the boiling water. This will melt the ingredient without the risk of burning it). Next, spear small bars or brownies with a skewer and then dip them in the coating. Place them on parchment paper, remove the skewers and allow them to cool for about half an hour. When the dip has set, you’ll have an unbeatable treat!

Many people look on baking as an impossibility; they can’t imagine making the perfectly-shaped cookies they buy from the school’s holiday bake sale or recreating their mother’s incredible cakes. Many others have messed up once or twice and stepped away saying “I can’t bake!” If you believe baking is beyond your abilities, I have some good news for you: you can bake, and it’s easier than it looks. Here are a few steps to take in order to make baking easy and fun:

1. Don’t Challenge Yourself Immediately

Choose something easy at first—something that only has a few short steps and a small number of ingredients. A personal favorite of mine when I’m looking for something quick and tasty is the Joy of Cooking’s butterscotch brownies, which only have seven or eight easy-to-work ingredients. If looking through a book is too slow for you, just search for easy recipes online.

2. Read the Instructions Carefully

Many beginners end up skimming through a recipe and jumping into it without paying attention. This can lead to a long series of disasters: they thought they had all the ingredients when they don’t, they forget to soften butter before creaming it, or they don’t own a flour sifter (or even know what one looks like!). The result is a long, slow battle against their ingredients that feels like something out of World War One.

Make sure you read every word of the instructions. Do you have every ingredient in your house? Do you have every piece of equipment the recipe calls for? Do you understand what each step is asking you to do? Take the time to research what you need to know and buy what you don’t have before starting.

If you do have everything and know all the answers, read the instructions again anyway. I’ve had numerous times where I’ve done things like mixing the ingredients for a crust with the ingredients for a filling, just because I missed the line that said “In a separate bowl…” Make sure you look for pitfalls like this, and always reread each step before you proceed with it.

2.5. Don’t Guestimate!

Always measure your ingredients exactly. If a recipe calls for a cup and two tablespoons of flour, you can be pretty sure the writers didn’t mean a cup and three tablespoons of flour. Adding too much or too little of something can make your recipe too dry to hold together or too wet to bake. It only takes a few seconds to properly measure something, so don’t look at this as a way to save time.

3. Prepare First

Lay out all of the dishes, tools, and ingredients you need before you begin. You might discover that you’re actually out of butter, or that you need to wash your mixing bowls. It’s much better to learn this and take care of it now rather than when you’re halfway through the recipe.

Also, take any steps that you’ll need to ahead of time; if you’re making homemade brownies, for example, you’ll need to cool the melted chocolate a while before you proceed with the recipe. Take care of these things during your preparation stage. Finally, when you’re just about to start mixing the ingredients together, start preheating your oven.

4. Get Mixing!

Once you have everything you need and know what you need to do, you can start working on the recipe. Follow each step as closely as you can. With your thorough understanding of what they’re asking for and all your tools and ingredients laid out before you, this’ll be a piece of cake.

5. Keep Track of Time

If you have a timer or if your oven comes with one, make sure to use it. If you don’t own one, then it’s a good idea to buy one. If you don’t, you might wander into the living room, get inexplicably caught up in your daughter’s cartoon, and forget about the food entirely until the smoke detector starts shrieking. The friendly little “Ding!” of a timer is a much better sound to hear.

Be sure to set your timer for a few minutes before the recipe is finished so that you can check and make sure it isn’t cooking too fast—recipes can occasionally burn even when taken out at the right time.

6. Don’t Give Up

Everyone makes mistakes from time to time, and occasionally X factors, such as humidity, will interfere and completely ruin a perfect recipe. Don’t let it get to you. Stick to your guns, follow these rules, and keep trying, and soon you’ll be making mouthwatering treats that people will beg you to make again and again.

Packing lunch for your kids often seems like it would be easy to those who haven’t had to do it. There’s a lot to keep in mind – is it healthy? Is there enough variety? Are my kids actually enjoying it and eating it all? Am I packing too much, or not enough? If you’re having some trouble with this or just starting for the first time, here are a few ideas to help you out.

Choosing a Lunch Box

A lunch box has a lot of advantages over a bag, which can easily get squished in a backpack, leaving your poor son or daughter with a peach mushed into their sandwich, and possibly their math homework. It’s enough to traumatize a first-grader! A lunch box is much better because it will stand up to most of the kicking around it’s bound to experience. If possible, choose one with separate compartments so that foods stay apart and don’t end up crushed together. In summer it is important to get one that will accommodate a freezer block if you are giving your child things such as ham, cheese, milk or any other food that could “go off” during the day. Finally, make sure it’s got a “cool” factor that makes him or her proud to have it in front of friends – and be ready to get a new one when it isn’t cool anymore.

Healthy School Lunches

Make sure you include something from each food group: grains, protein, vegetables, fruit and dairy. If possible, find out what they can get from the cafeteria when they’re eating a cold lunch: perhaps they can get a carton of milk a piece of fruit there, for example. Make sure to find out if they’ll have to pay as well. If so, this is often a better, safer option than packing fruit or a drink, either of which can quickly turn into a backpack-ruining disaster.

Avoid foods that contain high fructose corn syrup, trans fats, and other unhealthy additives. If you decide to pack packaged fruit, for example, make sure that it’s packed in water rather than syrup. This is lower in sugar and much healthier.

Food Your Child will Love

Make sure the meal is enjoyable! It’s often tempting to pack the healthiest meal possible, but there’s a certain point at which this stops being an advantage. For example, whole grain bread will certainly be much healthier for your child than white bread, as will plain raw vegetables. The problem is, none of that will help if he or she doesn’t eat any of it! If your children can’t stand whole wheat bread, don’t pack it in their lunches; if they’ll only eat celery or apples with peanut butter, add the peanut butter. Look for sneaky ways to make it healthier, like giving them high-fiber white bread.

It’s also not a bad thing to include treats with the lunch; however, it’s best to avoid prepackaged sweets. Instead, try baking your own, and get the children involved while you’re at it. Kids can often learn to bake easily, and while they might just get in the way at first, they’ll soon be a big help. Pre make homemade cakes, cookies, brownies, and other things that you can pack easily. You’ll have control over the ingredients that go in, so you’ll be able to make sure your kids aren’t getting all of those unpleasant preservatives and additives they would otherwise. On top of having something to look forward to in their lunch, your kids will have learned a new skill they can be proud of.

Follow these principles and you’ll be able to rest at ease knowing your kids have a healthy, enjoyable meal, including a treat, securely packed in their lunchbox… as long as they don’t forget it on the kitchen table!

Practically everybody loves baked goods. This makes it nearly impossible for a bake sale to fall flat. Even so, a truly profitable fundraiser will require some planning and forethought. Here are a few tips and things to keep in mind for planning a bake sale.

How to Run a Bake Sale…

Find a Venue

You’ll need to know where you’re holding the event first. Many organizations and businesses are perfectly receptive to having bake sales on their grounds. Grocery stores, college sports events, and malls are good choices. The building of the organization you’re fundraising for (such as a church or school) may already function well as a location for the sale, of course, so don’t rule that out either.

Timing

Next, it’s critical that you choose a good time for your sale. For example, if you’re running it at a play, you absolutely have to be there before the event starts and at the intermission, and you may be able to pick up a few more sales afterwards as well. If you’re selling at a grocery store on a weekday, it’s much better to be there at a rush hour than when everybody’s at work; at a college, try to be present during changes in classes. Ask workers, students, or regular attendants for their opinions on the best time for you to be present.

Variety

If you only have sugar cookies, you’ll only attract people who want sugar cookies at the moment. Plan to have a wide variety of different baked goods. Many times, potential customers will wander over to see if you have something specific and simply walk away if you don’t have it. If you’re running your bake sale in a relatively low-traffic venue, you may want to limit yourself to the most popular items: chocolate chip, peanut butter and sugar cookies, cupcakes, and other difficult-to-resist treats that nearly everybody loves. At higher-traffic venues, you’ll have a wider range of tastes and budgets to cater to, so bigger items like pies and cakes have a much better chance of selling.

If you’re working with a group, make absolutely certain everyone knows what everyone is making, and try to play to people’s strengths. If everybody loves Amanda’s fudge, ask if she’ll bring a batch to the event before allowing others to decide what they’re making. Try to get everyone to prepare different things unless you feel you need so much of one item that it’s a good idea to have multiple people baking it.

Quantity

It’s important that your tables look full—people will get the impression that they’re buying leftovers or stale goods if there are only a few things scattered across a large table. However, keep in mind that it’s unlikely you’ll sell everything either. Don’t make more than you’ll be able to find a use for afterwards, and always have a backup plan for the leftovers.

Use Your Cause to Your Advantage

Let everybody know exactly what you’re raising money for. If you have a good cause, put up a sign that explains the problem and how their money will help your organization make the world a better place. Often, passersby who’d be reluctant to part with their money will stop to make a purchase if you pull at their heartstrings well enough—and since they’re going to get something delicious out of the deal, why wouldn’t they make a purchase?

Portability

Too many times, a potential customer will arrive at a bake sale, take a look at some mouthwatering cupcakes, and decide to buy a dozen to take home… until they realize that they’re going to end up with frosting all over the seats of their car. You can solve this problem with cupcake boxes and cake boxes that will keep your baked goods safe all the way home.

A Quick Tip from Personal Experience

You might be tempted to put whipped cream on some of your items before putting them on the table for sale. Do not do this—it may lose its consistency within an hour or two, and soon you’ll end up with a once-beautiful pie drowned in liquid cream. Believe me, that pie will be impossible to sell!

If you follow these tips, your bake sale should be a smooth, profitable, and rewarding experience. Your cause will benefit, and the time and effort of everyone involved will be worthwhile.

Every holiday brings its own form of chaos to the kitchen, and if you’re unprepared for it then the big day can bring incredible amounts of stress. Things will go much more smoothly if you plan and start baking ahead of time. Here are a few tips for taking off the pressure so you can actually enjoy your next holiday:

Reduce Holiday Stress by Baking Ahead…

Decide what to Make

Nearly every family has holiday baking traditions. Make a list of everything your family just has to have, and ask around to make sure you aren’t forgetting anything. Once this is done, you can decide whether or not you want to get creative. Are you itching to try something new this year? Is there something you saw on TV or while flipping through a cookbook that looked too good to resist? Have you forgotten about that incredible chocolate cheesecake recipe your neighbor gave you? Add anything you want to make to the list.

When you have your completed list in hand, make sure you have all the recipes bookmarked or printed out and kept in a place where you know you won’t lose them. Write down all the ingredients, and compare them with what you already have in the pantry. Find out what you’ll need and head over to the store now so you can beat the holiday rush. But as with any recipe, it’s important that you read these instructions all the way through before getting started, so don’t hurry over just yet!

Prioritize

Some things need to be served fresh-baked on the day of the event, but others are just as delicious days later. Look at your list and figure out which ones will last and which ones will have to be done on the holiday itself. For example, cookies can last several days, but frosting can easily turn hard and crusty. For a batch of after-dinner Christmas Eve sugar cookies, you could schedule the cookies for December 21st and the frosting for right before you begin working on the big dinner. After dinner, you can make a family event out of decorating the cookies.

Know Thy Family and Know Thyself

Some people have a lot of self control, some don’t. Are you and your housemates going to be able to look at that delicious pie in the fridge for a week without touching it? Is all of the fudge still going to be there on Easter… or any of it, for that matter? If your family has the discipline, just tell them not to touch anything until it’s time. But if you know they’re going to be slipping their hands into the cookie jar every time you turn your back (or that you’ll be the one reaching in when nobody else is around, for that matter), then plan for it. Bake at least twice as much as you normally would of anything that you’re making ahead of time. Make sure to account for this when figuring out what ingredients you’ll need!

Transportation

Not everybody celebrates their holidays in their own home. If you’re planning on traveling to a relative’s house, you’ll need safe ways to transport everything, especially tricky things like cakes. Cupcake boxes, Christmas tins, Tupperware, and cake boxes are all wonderful tools for getting your mouthwatering confections to their destination safe and fresh.

If you follow these tips, your next big celebration should be much less stressful and far more enjoyable. Happy holidays, and have fun baking!

If you’re in charge of a group of children, such as at a preschool, church, or camp, you may occasionally be asked to come up with ideas for crafts. The following guidelines can help you lead an enjoyable, tear-free session, tailored to your unique lesson plan:

Creating Original Crafts for Children’s Groups…

Supplies

The first step is to figure out what supplies you have available. These will be your only real limitations. Do you have construction paper? Glue sticks? Safety scissors? You might be able to get more things from outside if you’re living in a rural area as well, such as pine cones (you can use the scales as shingles for miniature houses) or flowers or colorful leaves (for pressing).

It can also be a great idea to have things like cupcake boxes and cake boxes available in bulk. There are unlimited craft possibilities in small boxes like these: you can use them to make little houses, paint them like stone blocks and guide the construction of a miniature castle, or cut them apartto get a good, strong construction material you can use for virtually anything.

Think Theme

Now that you know what you have, think about what your group has been working with lately. Have they been learning about animals? Reading a specific story? Talking about a point in history? Let your imagination run wild on the subject—think of anything that would be fun to build and try to imagine a way to build it with your materials. Write down everything that comes to mind. Next, it’s time to consider:

Skill Level

Always take the children’s hand-eye coordination into account. Some people seem like they could construct a house of cards at the age of five, while others can be reduced to tears of frustration trying to cut out a paper rainbow. While you don’t want to hold back the star students, allowing too much freedom can quickly lead to competition that leads the less-skilled students to feel ashamed of their work in comparison to what others have built. Try to create a project that everyone can keep up with, and provide hands-on help and instruction for anyone lagging behind.

Practice Beforehand

Once you’ve settled on an idea, make sure to practice what you’re going to have the kids make first! If you can’t make it easily, they probably won’t be able to either. You can also use the one you’ve made as an example: simply put it on display so they can see what they’re trying to make.

When it’s time to start crafting, provide instructions in the simplest way you can, and demonstrate the building process for them. Soon, your students will all have works of art that they’re proud of—and you’ll be proud to have helped them explore their potential. Do not forget to include cupcake boxes as part of your arsenal, it is a fun and affordable option to consider.

If you’re a parent, this situation may sound familiar: you buy your child an expensive toy they’ve been begging for, and they’re thrilled when they open it. You help them with the setup and leave them to enjoy it… then come back two hours later to discover that they’ve abandoned the gift and built a fort out of the cardboard box it came in.

This phenomenon is part of the premise behind Alice McLerran’s famous children’s story Roxaboxen: children create an entire town of their own by playing with nothing but boxes, sticks and rocks. Another famous example is Calvin and Hobbes, in which Calvin often uses a cardboard box to defy the laws of physics. For a child’s creative mind, boxes have unlimited potential to become anything and everything they want them to be.

While it’s unlikely that your children would give you a shiny-eyed thank-you and a big hug for buying them a few boxes (and you certainly don’t want to give them as a wrapped gift on a birthday or Christmas!), many will be unable to resist the siren call of the possibilities offered by these simple blank, empty containers. It’s just like a blank piece of paper: it can be absolutely anything a moment later. Maybe that paper’s destined to be a crayon portrait of the family dog, or perhaps it’s meant to be the first story your child ever puts to paper; maybe it’s even destined to become a paper airplane. In exactly the same way, that box could become anything from storage for a rock collection to a robot suit to the Great Wall of the Living Room.

All you have to do to for your children to make incredible memories is to make the boxes available to them. Don’t tell them to play with them or try to give them ideas at first. Simply tell them where the boxes are and let them know that they can do anything at all that they want to with them, within the regular rules of the house. Most children’s curiosity will get the better of them, and soon they’ll be testing the limits of “anything” and having the time of their lives inventing new uses for this simple, everyday item.

While everyone collects a few boxes over the course of regular shopping, they’re often damaged, covered with tape, or heavily printed with instructions and product images. These can put a damper on a child’s imagination: tape can make it impossible to draw on parts, damage can ruin what the child was hoping to do with it, and it’s difficult to imagine that the box is actually a time machine when it’s got a picture of a refrigerator on it. This means it’s a good idea to buy boxes specifically for your children to use, and in every size: from cupcake boxes to cake boxes to boxes several feet across. With more sizes, there are even more possibilities.

Boxes can allow a child’s imagination to soar more freely than nearly any toy, game, or organized activity. Make them available to your children, then sit back and watch imaginations soar.