A Marble Race Machine Cake

So here it is. The most adventurous cake I've ever made: a marble race machine cake. Designed for a round lolly to roll through it and out onto the top of a cup cake.

And it actually wasn't as difficult to make as you'd think.

I baked 3 cakes in a bread loaf tin, and froze them. I then cut them into flat sided rectangular blocks. I then cut some tracks into them, which was a little fiddly. The tracks went something like this:

I stacked it all together (using chocolate butter icing as the glue) and tweaked it until a Jaffa/Malteser would roll down without getting caught. I used icing to stick wafer biscuits onto the back to stop the Jaffa from flying out at any stage. There are more wafer biscuits under the bottom of the front of the cake, because it was doing a small leaning tower impression. Finally the whole thing was held in place with some skewers from top to bottom, and a few tooth picks for any pointy bits that looked like they needed a bit of extra support (i.e. where the track turned and under the spout at the front).

The decorations were made from white chocolate or mint chocolate biscuits. I melted the white chocolate into a sheet 2 or 3mm thick, and when it had hardened I cut the shapes out using cookie cutters. The gears were made using 2 circle cutters, and the tip of a star shaped cutter for the grooves.

And just to prove it really worked, here's a video from the front, and a second one from the back.

The kids at the party each got their own cup cake (topped with a lolly snake to make a catching ring) and rolled their own Jaffa through the machine to top it. The Jaffas worked better than the Maltesers perhaps because they're smaller and sugar coated. 

The birthday boy was very very happy with it. Mission accomplished. :)

Travel Activity Book

I really wanted to make some wipe-erase activity sheets. I first bought wipe erase pens, but although they wrote well on clear folder pockets and smooth clear plastic, I found they wiped off very easily. This made the drawings (and little hands) very messy. Not to mention that the ink didn't wash out of clothes. Meanwhile they wouldn't wipe off laminated pages at all.

It wasn't until I heard about dry-erase crayons from Crayola and found a $5 packet of them at Target, that this idea really started to take shape.

The dry-erase crayons don't work easily on clear folder pockets (too much drag), but they do work well on laminated paper. Even better, they rub off quite easily with the cloth that comes with them, but don't rub off on your hand.

So then, time to make an activity travel book. I wanted something that would be suitable for planes, restaurants, the back of the car, rainy days, etc. so I made the pages A5 size.

I first started with some scenes that could be filled in with crayons or stickers. Miss 3 loves finishing a scene, wiping it off and then drawing it again. Especially if she has some company to do it with. Her favourite is the scene with the people, but I also included a space scene, underwater scene and a road. I used ripped paper, stickers and crayons to make them.

I then printed out some spot the difference puzzles (Mr 4's favourite puzzle at the moment), and I drew in some activities like a maze, thumbprints to make thumbprint doodles, and make-your-own sums in the left-over spaces. The crayons unfortunately don't show up fantastically on the red paper. The kids love mazes which are like streets with a different picture at each dead-end. And the maze lasts longer because they like visiting each object in turn. They are a little too easy for Mr 4, but that just means he tells me how they are too easy while he's busy doing them.

Next I put in the classic travel games: battle ships and close the square.

I also put in a blank page with a few other suggestions of games like tic-tac-toe or hangman that could be played there. I wrote the alphabet along one side to make hangman easier.

Finally I put in a home made plane scavenger hunt.

Edited to add: I have now made a plane trip scavenger hunt you can download for free from here.

I bound the book together using ring loops. This way I can change the pages to add things like my homemade i-spy pages (if I decide to add them in), new puzzles, new mazes or a page to collect stickers on. I can also take out the plane i-spy, and put in a car bingo etc.

Marble Maze

This idea came from Teach Preschool . We cut up an old cake box, and used sticky tape to stick the straws down. I initially started with just an arrow at the start and finish, but Mr 4 needed a bit more of a challenge, and so together we put numbered dots in 6 different corners. This time he had to try and roll the marble to each number in the right order. This made it very appealing to him, so much so, he took it for show and tell to school.

Meanwhile Miss 2 enjoyed cutting the straws into millions of small pieces.