play cakes

If the three-tier cake chalkboard I made in my previous post for CRAFT is not enough for the budding Ace of Cakes in your household, here’s a really exciting cake decorating project that your kids can do while you’re busy making real cake in the kitchen.

All you’ll need are tubs of Play Doh (or your homemade version), small nested hat boxes and some random objects around the house that can be used to flatten the Play Doh and make various textures.

I found an amazing range of pastel colored Play Doh at my favorite dollar store, Dollarama.  Two boxes per cake should be sufficient.  The largest tier should be no more than 5″ wide, so covering the boxes would still be manageable with a couple of tubs of Play Doh.  I used 3″ and 5″ boxes.  Smaller may even be better.

1. Assist your little one in rolling the Play Doh until it is less than 1/4″ thick.  I used a 1/2″ dowel.  Stores like Michaels carry mini rolling pins for children.  My 5″ bottom tier required 2 tubs of Play Doh.

2. Assist your little one in placing the rolled out Play Doh and flattening it on and around the box until it is fairly even.

3. Let them imagine the cake any way they want.  As inspiration, I’ve made a striated surface on my play cake by pressing a pencil along the sides and repeating to make a pattern.

4. Repeat above on second box and stack the layers.

5. Now let them decorate!  As inspiration, you can show them how to press pieces of dough with their thumbs to make petals.

6. A finished play cake!

Adults can’t have all the fun decorating lavish tiered cakes!