Felt Cake Craft

Let your kid craft a cake without having to clean frosting off the walls.

Submitted by
Sonam Adinolf

Your kid's already quite the talented baker's assistant. He's not even in kindergarten yet and he's already mastered the art of eating frosting. Skip the sugar high and let him decorate and redecorate this homemade cake as many times as he wants. One taste of felt frosting and we can pretty much guarantee he'll keep this cake out of his mouth.

Felt sheets:
Stock up on a whole bunch of 9" x 11" sheets next time you see them on sale.
Felt letters and shapes:
Buy them prepackaged or draw them and cut them out yourself.
A marker
A dinner plate, a plastic bowl or lids:
Anything round you can use to trace a couple of large circles in a couple of sizes.
Scissors
Penne pasta
Velcro:
You can buy the precut dots or just cut a big strip into little pieces.
Hot glue:
Kids and hot glue don't mix, so make sure you do all the gluing.

Gather your supplies and your kid and let him know you're going to bake a fake cake.
Start with a large piece of felt and help your kid trace a large circle on it using a marker and a plate as a template. Let your baker's assistant choose the flavor: Chocolate (brown felt)? Vanilla (white felt)? Rainbow chip? (We'll let you figure out what color of felt that is.)
Cut out the circle and have your child put the "cake" into an "oven" to cook. (By oven we mean sock drawer, under the couch pillows, or play oven.)
Next, have your kid trace a slightly smaller circle out of another square of felt. This is the frosting. Will it be strawberry pink, cherry red, lemon yellow or mocha chip brown? Whatever you decide we're sure it will be delicious. When you're all done tracing it, cut it out.
Hot-glue the frosting circle to the cake circle. Now put your "frosted cake" into the "fridge" to set. (By fridge we mean closet, bathtub or even your real fridge.)
Now it's candle time. Hot glue the Velcro to the bottoms of pieces of penne pasta. If your kid is feeling artsy, have him color the pasta to make schmancy candles.
Then, cut out yellow or orange felt flames and hot glue them to the other end of each candle.
Fill a small bowl with all sorts of different felt shapes for your kid to decorate his cake with. If you don't have any precut shapes, cut out some hearts, squares or jellybeans.
Take your cake out of the "fridge" cut it into four big, delicious slices and let Mr. Frosting Eater decorate his felt cake to his heart's content.
With enough practice, he may even be able to give you a hand decorating the elaborate Shrek/Thomas/Diego/Spiderman cake for his next birthday.