Three-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies

The recipe: 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg. Mix, roll into balls, press with a fork, bake 10 minutes at 350°F. That's the whole thing. (Check for nut allergies first — obviously.)

Kids can do every step except the oven. Let them measure, mix, roll, and do the fork crosshatch. Messy hands are part of the curriculum.

While the cookies bake, that's your built-in cleanup and cool-down window. Eating warm cookies you made yourself is a top-five childhood feeling.

Send each kid home with three cookies in a baggie. The parents will think you're a hero. Let them.