Bakerman is always a special time of the term for me as it is a chance for me and my eldest daughter to bake something together, just the two if us. We do of course have a little spectator, but for now she seems quite content to just watch.
We always start the process off a good week or so beforehand, trawling Pinterest for child friendly baking ideas. As we had made cupcakes last term I encouraged her to choose something different this time. They have been learning about the sea and fish and so she ended up settling on custard and biscuit cups with teddy bears and beach umbrellas. Now, don’t worry, it sounds far more complicated than it actually is and this is far more of an assembly activity than a baking one, however, my little baker didn’t seem to mind at all.
What you need:
• Ready made custard (you can make your own but I like that the ready made version is long life)
• Blue food colouring
• Marie biscuits (or any other vanilla biscuits)
• Rainbow strip sweets
• Teddy bear cookies
• Cocktail umbrellas
• Plastic or paper cups (the plastic ones are nice as you can see the layers)
• Small plastic spoons
The first layer is the water. Put all of your custard in a bowl and add in some blue food colouring. Place about two tablespoons of custard in each cup.
The next layer is the biscuit layer. Tip all of the biscuits into a bowl and use a pestle (from a mortar and pestle set) to crush the biscuits into fine crumbs. If you don’t have a pestle you can place the biscuits into a plastic bag and bash them with a rolling pin. Once you have a fine biscuit crumb, place about two teaspoons of crumb in each cup. Just enough to make a ‘sand’ layer on top of the ‘water’.
Cut the strips of ribbon sweets into pieces and lay one on top of each cup, these are the teddy’s towels.
Next, place a teddy on top of each towel.
Last of all, put an umbrella and a small spoon in each cup and you are done. I tell you what, I wouldn’t mind relaxing on a beach right now myself!
I know that there wasn’t any baking involved but we had a lot of fun mixing, bashing, cutting, sprinkling and assembling that it really didn’t matter. And the best part is that the extra tester cups that my daughters had after their dinner were a hit, let’s hope that the rest of her class think so too.