The Best Cooking Classes in New York City to Take

Banish bland dates with a cooking class catered to couples. Putting a refreshing spin on the traditional date night dinner, Home Cooking New York’s “Romantic Dinner for Two” tasks you and your mate with preparing—and enjoying—your own meal. Over the course of the 2.5-hour class, you’ll learn how to make hanger steak, pommes anna, dark chocolate mousse, and a special champagne cocktail, all sure to wow your cooking partner—and secure you another date.

At Milk Bar’s “Bake the Book’’ classes, your favorite gut- (and wallet)-busting dessert chain shares its sweetest secrets. Learn to make Milk Bar’s cult-favorite cakes and truffles at its “Birthday Cake,” “Chocolate Malt Cake,” and “Chocolate Chip Cake” classes. Here, you’ll learn the basics of cake assembly and how to transform cake scraps into a tasty treat in their own right, before walking away with your very own six-inch layer cake and cake truffles.

With La Scuola di Eataly, the city’s most popular grocery store-cum-restaurant adds another title to its credits: Italian cooking academy. Driven by the belief that “the more you know, the more you enjoy,” Eataly offers an unmissable array of on-site cooking classes. The company’s “Hands-On” workshop series includes “Forming Formaggio,” “Italian Desserts: Holiday Edition,” and an intensive “Fresh Pasta” course.

While it’s difficult to pick just one standout class at Ample Hills Creamery, a Brooklyn-based ice cream parlor that offers courses such as “Ice Cream 101” and “Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate,” the drinks and dessert-themed “Kindred Spirits” may be the cream of the crop. Your favorite childhood snack is all grown up at this 21-and-up class, where students sample local bourbons, rums, and ryes before creating their own boozy sundaes and liquor-infused ice creams.

Since 1940, Murray’s Cheese has been the local authority on everyone’s favorite food, fromage. At “Mozzarella Making,” you’ll learn from the masters about curds and coagulation while sampling fresh pulled curd-style cheeses, enjoying unlimited pours of wines, and making your own mozzarella.

Happily, for amateur cooks, pretension is not on the menu at the Brooklyn Kitchen, a self-described “radical cooking school” working to teach people “how to cook like grown-ups.” Catering to “busy people,” the school specializes in simplifying home cooking. While you can’t go wrong with any of the Kitchen’s countless classes, we recommend the school’s ethnic cooking classes, including “Korean 101,” “Taste of Spain,” and “Japanese Street Food,” as a way to make exotic eating attainable.

At Appetite for Seduction, you’ll learn the “first ingredient to any dish is love.” The four-hour dinner parties-meets-cooking classes at this quirky East Village establishment are great for groups of friends and couples cooking together. Explore the social side of food at classes such as “Italian Lover” and “From France With Love.”

Baking greats, such as Dominique Ansel Bakery and Milk Bar, are headed by graduates of this award-winning culinary school. Follow in their flour-lined footsteps at any of the International Culinary Center (ICC)’s amateur baking classes. ICC’s one-day “Classic Croissants,” “Cupcake Decorating,” and “Nordic Bread Baking” classes will make baking a breeze.