Transform a plate of cupcakes into a sweet vegetable garden.
While cooking and baking generally require adult supervision, even young children can use frosting, candies and other edible materials to help with the decorating. Gardening-themed desserts are no exception. Talk to the children about unfamiliar flowers, vegetables and common garden creatures as you prepare the dessert to add a learning element to the activity. Does this Spark an idea?
Flower Box Cake
Help children create a cake that resembles a flower-box planter with edible flowers. A loaf cake can serve as the base, but you can also cut a larger rectangular cake into halves or thirds and stack the pieces to create the shape of a planter. Kids can smooth icing over the top and sides of the cake and gently press square or rectangular cookies onto the sides of the cake to form the walls of the planter. Use crushed graham crackers, chocolate cookies or chocolate icing on the top of the cake to mimic potting soil. Let children fashion flowers out of crispy rice-cereal treats tinted with a few drops of food coloring. Add the food coloring to the melted marshmallows just before you mix in the cereal and press the mixture into a pan. Once the mixture cools, use flower-shaped cookie cutters to create the blooms, and gently insert a wooden skewer into the bottom of each flower to serve as a stem.
Vegetable Garden Cupcakes
Let children recreate their favorite vegetables in candy form on garden cupcakes. Older children or adults can prepare the cupcakes by frosting them with chocolate frosting and dipping the frosted part of the cupcake into a bowl of crushed chocolate cookies. This gives each cupcake the appearance of rich garden soil. Let children shape colored taffy candies into vegetables such as carrots, radishes or pea pods to decorate the cupcakes. You can also sprinkle candy-covered sunflower seeds on the cupcakes for a quick decoration. Serve the cupcakes on a large platter or place each one in a small, clean flower pot.
Garden Creature Candies
Children can form handmade candies into garden bug shapes. Start with a simple truffle recipe and show the children form the truffles into balls to create the bodies of ladybugs, bees, beetles or spiders. Form smaller balls into the creatures' heads. Dip each truffle into melted candy coating. Meltable candy wafers are available in a variety of colors at craft stores and the cake decorating aisle of many big-box stores. Use sliced almonds to create bee's wings or pieces of shoestring licorice for spider legs. Provide several types of candy for the children to attach with melted chocolate or candy coating to decorate their garden creatures.
Tags: candies into, candy coating, chocolate cookies, food coloring, garden creatures, sides cake, soil children