Pretend Play Just Got Sweeter

Felt Cupcakes for Pretend Play

Imagine kids setting up a tea party with these sweet felt treats. How will they choose just one? We all know pretend play is an important part of kids development and felt food is a great addition to any tea set or kitchen play center.

Since we launched our shop on Etsy we've been dreaming up new designs. We're excited to launch some sweet new styles this fall. Shown here is a group of felt cupcakes featuring some new color combinations and toppings including a birthday candle, chocolate heart, strawberry, cream puff and cherry! These felt treats will be available for sale at the Packanack Lake Craft Show on November 1st in Wayne, NJ. After that we plan to list these for sale in our shop at etsy.com.

With every piece of felt food we complete we find ways to make the designs even cuter. Our ice cream cones are a good example. We found a way to make the felt ice cream scoop a bit rounder and the ruffle more finished. We offer felt ice cream cones in strawberry, chocolate, vanilla (shown here) and mint chocolate chip too!

Up next are some new cake slices. We haven't done these in a while but have lots of ideas for color combinations and designs. Check back soon to see what we bake up ;)

Dreaming of Felt Food

Felt food is great way to encourage pretend play

Like many moms, I get my work done after the kids are asleep. Last night I was dreaming up a new style of icing for our felt cupcakes. The first post on this blog showed our original attempts at creating a realistic cupcake shape. If you've tried making your own patterns for felt food you know it takes a few tries to get a piece looking just right. Katherine and I initially settled on one icing style and have sold several in our shop on Etsy. These cupcakes feature soft ruffles in pink and white felt.

The fun thing about cupcakes today is variety, so we're going to keep dreaming up new designs for our felt cupcakes too! Our newest style features bold swirls of felt. I still need to stitch the layers together but so far I think it looks great. I couldn't resist putting a cherry on top. This was my first try at a felt cherry!! It was tedious to stitch the pieces together, but I think it's a nice finishing touch on this piece.

If you're shopping for play food this holiday season, please consider handmade felt treats like ours. See more of our felt goodies in our shop on Etsy!

Quick and Easy Cream Puffs

Cream Puffs are a fun and easy recipe to try with kids.

It hit me last night, summer's winding down and there are just two weeks before school. I decided today was going to be a family fun day - no chores!! So we decided to spend our day making treats. If you've read our blog before you know I'm not great at baking - but today we struck gold with sweet and easy cream puffs. I'm telling you anyone can make these, even me.

We followed a very basic recipe from our Better Homes and Gardens cookbook - this is our go to source for everything. If you don't have this cookbook, the recipe is also online. The best part about today was that we had fun at home with stuff already in our kitchen. The basic ingredients for cream puffs are water, eggs, butter, flour and a pinch of salt. That's it!! For the filling we used instant pudding which we stirred by hand. With two eager helpers five minutes of stirring was perfect - everyone had several turns.

I couldn't believe how easy it was to make the dough and when I first put it on the baking tray -I admit, I was skeptical this was actually going to work. But after 30 minutes in the oven they looked great (although not all the perfect shape or size).

We had fun scooping out the inside and adding pudding - topping it off with, of course, chocolate sauce and confectioners sugar. Definitely try this at home - super easy and very YUMMY!!

Of course real cream puffs are the best, but felt creations are fun too and last long after the real treats are gobbled up. The other day I experimented with felt circles and made a bunch of cream puffs to use on our felt food. Just like real cream puffs, these were super easy too.

To make these you just need a small circle of felt with triangle shaped notches cut out all the way around. Think of it like a clock and keep the cuts symmetrical - 12, 3, 6, 9 and one in between each of those. Sew each layer to the next, tie off and your done!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We'd love to know...

What's your favorite recipe to make with kids?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Evolution of our Felt Cupcake!

We tossed around lots of business ideas, and then we discovered felt play food. We were immediately hooked on the idea felt food and set off to try our hand at creating our own versions. Our goal was to keep our product original so we decided to create our own patterns. Not as easy to do as we thought. My first cupcake was too large, Katherine's was smaller and more along the lines of what we had in mind. My second cupcake was cute, but looked more like those great mini chocolate mouse cakes. The third attempt was too small and a bit boring.

We really wanted a realistic size and shape - easy for kids to hold. Although kids love icing the best (and that's usually all they eat), we thought a detailed cupcake wrapper was important. So we experimented a bit, and then found a process that worked for us and makes our cupcake look authentic. Our end result is fun for kids - soft, squishy, and a replica of one of their favorite foods. Plus we think it looks gorgeous with lots of ruffled felt layers of icing on top.

We used acrylic felt and fleece for our prototypes - we now have a great supply of heirloom quailty, wool blend felt that's resists pilling and will better hold up to years of fun.

This is just the beginning for us - we look to real desserts as the inspiration for our felt play food. The ideas are limitless and we hope you check us out again to see what we're baking up next!