Kids cakes you can afford – Fake Cakes

Most of us want to give our kids the best for their Birthdays and an OTT (Over The Top) Birthday cake has suddenly become the normal requirement.

Even if I could afford to buy a 4 tier OTT $800 cake for my child’s first birthday does it really mean I want to ?

Heck NO !

I can think of many other things to spend the money on including a good bottle of wine that I will need to drink after the 20+ kids run riot through my house.

So why not fake it and fool everyone that you are indeed a “time savvy organized rich mother “.

I must admit faking cakes is nothing new to me, many times I have had to put a fake base on a homemade creation just so it doesn’t topple over but that was more out of necessity them affordability.

So what about the real cake? Well you have 2 options – make 1 tier real (make sure you cut from this tier) or take the cake back into the kitchen and serve up a sheet cake. Everyone will be none the wiser.

IMPORTANT TIP: If your fake cake is colored e.g, blue, make sure the real cake that you a slicing from also has a sheet of the same icing otherwise your cover will be blown.

Here are some bases around $50 a set at Sugarcraft.

Here are a couple of videos to help you with techniques.

Mark Ballard has some great techniques http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT2pWtOlmEk

Donna shows us how to cover a polystyrene Dummy tiers with icing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKILPEC3q3Y

Rather fake some cake pops? then check out this post of Faking them too. Faking it doesn’t just start when you get married it can start at the reception too with this article about fake wedding cakes.

One of the subjects that’s often covered in preschool is learning about the five senses. Understanding our senses helps us describe the world around us and our experience in it, and it’s fun to explore the senses in different ways.

Rock Your Homeschool has a great free printables pack having to do with the five senses. I love the foldable activity shown above because it emphasizes that the way we really experience our senses is through our brains. They also have a sensory scavenger hunt printable, which doesn’t include taste but has the rest of the senses included.

Of course we don’t really want kids tasting things they find outside (unless you happen to have fruit or vegetables growing nearby) but I like the way Hands on Teaching Ideas handled it by including “something an animal would eat” on their five senses scavenger hunt.

Sea of Knowledge has lots of ideas for things to do with preschoolers to learn about the five senses, as well as this free with email signup template for making a five senses craft (you could also trace the child’s hands instead of using the hands in the template if you like).

Use a potato head toy you probably already have to play a five senses game with the download from A Little Pinch of Perfect. You could do the same thing on paper with a potato (or human body) shape and color on the different sense organs.

Simple Everyday Mom has a cute set of senses puppets you can print and play with, or use for different projects and crafts.

Preschool Packets has a whole set of posts dealing with teaching the five senses (the one linked here is for hearing but the rest are linked within that post), which includes a great idea for making shakers with kids to explore the sense of hearing.

Tim’s Printables has some cute five senses printables where kids can match the image to the sense you’d use to explore it. There’s also a body to label but I think there’s only a male version.

Have you read?