Monday, October 01, 2007

Edible Construction

We do this for Sukkot, the holiday of booth building. The kids get to build their own out of graham crackers and icing and candy. The green licorice is a nice substitute for leaves. You could adapt this for Christmas or whatever else you want.

My children can't believe I'm letting them handle all this sugar, but it's a holiday, and I am not a grinch.
The object of course is to figure out how to pile as much candy as you possibly can onto you booth, because you will get to eat it all. After dinner.


You will need,

Graham crackers

Candy (licorice tape, colored balls, whatever you want really)

Icing.

I don't usually bother with making royal icing with the egg whites. It is the strongest by far but this recipe works just fine, tastes better, and holds things together well enough to look at for a while before eating.

Ingredients

Icing sugar, lots

1/4 lb butter

water less than 1/2 a cup

paper plates

Cream together butter and sugar, add enough sugar so that the mixture is very dry. Slowly add a little bit of water until it reaches the consistency of a thick paste. If it's too thin, add more icing sugar. (This is very scientific.)

Then you can put it in ziplock bags and cut a little piece of the corner off to make and icing bag. Kids can squeeze their own icing out and use it to cement together the graham crackers into little boxes. For younger kids you can give them a small scoop of icing on their plate and they can dip the candies into it before gluing them to the sides top floor, whatever.

This is a lot of fun, you will want to jump in and make one yourself, and of course if you tell them that they can eat it after dinner for several days, they are less likely to gorge themselves all in one night. Mine don't ask for candy again for a looong time. They usually feel ill, which is fine with me, it may help them learn moderation.

1 comment:

allison said...

I love this! Looks like you guys had a lot of fun. I'm new to your blog and have spent the last few days enjoying reading through everything. I have three kids about the same ages as yours, so I find lots of what you have to say very relevant, not to mention wise. I was wondering how you cook your beans in the crock pot? I'd like to incorporate more beans and legumes into our diet this but I'm new to bean cookery. (I'm new to the blog ettiquette too, so I wasn't sure where to post this question. I know it doesn't have anything to do with the topic, but I wasn't sure where to put it. ) Thanks.

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