Cake decorating - diggers!

We all have those memories of that kid whose mum always pulled out some amazing home made cake - a pirate ship, a train, a working nuclear power plant...

I'm not that mum!

However, a friend of mine gave me some brilliant advice.

"Buy a chocolate cake and stick their favourite toy on top. They will love it!"

Works for me!

As you may have guessed, Little E likes diggers. I'd collected some ideas online of digger cakes. There are some awesome ones out there, but we were returning from a family wedding and staying at my in-laws house for Little E's birthday party, so I had limited time, equipment and (frankly) energy.

I'd eaten this cake from Sainsbury's at a work leaving do. It is a huge, triple layer chocolate cake. At the time, I thought it could work well as a building site with all the chocolate "rubble".

I stood and thought a bit about my options. I wanted to decorate the number 2 on top. I had wondered about having all the diggers arranged in a big 2, but they were too big, using brownies (too big), etc. The Malteasers I had bought were much more flexible to make a number out of, so I cleared a patch...

Then add diggers!

These are from a pack by Le Toy Van. I was so pleased when I got them out of the pack. They have great movements and feel nice.

All the chocolate flakes removed from the top could then be used as rubble.

There were 3 other diggers, but they were bigger than I expected and I decided less was more. However, my cousin-in-law had found some cute builder candles for me to add.

And with the rest of their crew...

Little E clocked the diggers immediately and (after we cut the cake) played with them all afternoon. They were definitely a hit!

It was such a simple thing to do and made everyone so happy, especially the people who ate the rest of my bag of Malteasers!

Crafting by not a very crafty mum - high five card

Our Little E loves a high five and when I saw this idea, it had to be done!

This was for Big E's birthday. Little E is beginning to like drawing a bit more now, but drawing around his hands is still the easiest way to get some crafting done.

"Ingredients"

Coloured card - purple is Big E's favourite, so I then chose a contrasting yellow

Glue

Pen

Paint and a sponge to paint with

Step 1

Draw around your little one's hands

Step 2

Cut out the hands. Be careful and keep the "stencil" for later. Fold your other piece of card in half.

Step 3

Cut out two thin strips of card and fold into concertinas. Stick these to your card and then onto your hands and they will pop out.

Step 4

I hadn't really thought about what to do with the front of the card, but there's a really nice UK show for children called Mister Maker. In one episode he used stencils and just painted around the edge to make a "cave painting". It looked pretty cool, so I thought I'd have a go. 

I really liked the effect and so did Big E. He wasn't expecting the surprise inside!

Step 5

I wrote my message on the front.

It is sitting proudly on the mantelpiece and hasn't fallen apart yet, so for the win!

Big Bang Cake

Big E's birthday! I've got into the habit of decorating a cake in the style of what programmes we are enjoying at the time.

So I've done Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones. Time for...The Big Bang Theory!

If you are a fan of the show, you'll remember there is an episode where Sheldon drinks coffee and ends up hiding in a ball pit from his friend Leonard. It's very funny. This was trying to replicate that. I got the idea via Pinterest, as per usual.

It didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but Big E appreciated it, Little E tried to eat all the M&Ms and our friends who love the show had a laugh.

I really cut corners this year, so I'm sure it could have turned out better. Here's what I did.

I was worried there wouldn't be time to bake a cake, so I bought one.

Then I cut out the ball pit. The cake had layers, so this was pretty easy to do. I used a plate to make a nice neat circle.

What did I do with the leftover cake I cut out, you ask?

Er....well...some of it might have gone in my mouth. Just to test of course...

Then I rolled out ready made red icing. I am useless at icing, so it's a bit of mess. It didn't help that there wasn't quite enough.

I cut out images of Sheldon and Leonard and stuck them on cocktails sticks, so I could push them into the cake.

I then added the balls to my ball pits. I used M&Ms, because I like them and they are nice and colourful, but you could use anything you fancy.

I had found edible gold glitter spray and fancied giving it a go. I thought I could use a stencil to write out Bazinga, etc. I should have taken more care, as you can see ther letters all smudged. I was going to use black and yellow icing originally, but was intrigued by the glitter. I think it would have looked much better with the icing.

It tasted yummy! We all enjoyed the M&Ms with our cake. I shouldn't feel so despondent about the result. Not everything will turn out as well as I'd hoped! That's the point...to learn new things. It will be better next time.

We are watching Person of Interest at the moment. Not sure how to make that into a cake...

Toddler activity - ice eggs

Just one of those ideas I squirrelled away for a slow day - make an ice egg that you can then "hatch".

I don't have any photos of the process, because I literally took a few minutes to sort this out and then bung it in the freezer for when I needed it.

Essentially, you freeze a toy animal in a block of ice. The original idea I saw was for "dinosaur eggs". We were visiting The Living Rainforest (http://www.livingrainforest.org) and Little E really liked the frogs, so I picked him up a plastic frog from their gift shop.

The figurines need to be pretty small, as you squeeze them through the neck of a balloon. Even this little fella took a bit of wiggling. Then pour water into the balloon, tie off and stick in the freezer. Cut and peel off the balloon when you want it. Voila!

I was thinking about ideas of how to melt the egg. Since Little E is not quite 2, I thought I'd just go for some warm water. When he's older, I might try things like salt. Not sure I remember the science behind why that works....

Little E loves water play, so really enjoyed pouring the water and got really excited as the ice shrunk away. He then poured his cup of milk in too!

He kept exclaiming "Gone! Gone!" about the ice. It was really exciting. Little E then did something I didn't expect and began some imaginative play with the frog - getting it to leap around in its little pond. In the end we went outside to do some more pond building for our new little guy, i.e pouring buckets of water everywhere to make puddles. It was awesome.

So, that seemed to work well. Need to collect some more plastic creatures and balloons for another day.