Happy National Baking Week!
Founded in 2007 the aim of National Baking week is to get people baking. We love to bake and often get our inspiration from stories. Several books have inspired us to get creative in the kitchen, we’d love to hear about any book inspired baking that you may have done.
Elmer by David McKee
This was one of my favourite book inspired baking activities when I was teaching in Early Years. Elmer inspired biscuits can be made using any biscuit recipe you like. Once the biscuits are cool you can create your patchwork elephant by sticking smarties onto a thin layer of icing, the challenge is to make sure that each elephant is decorated using six different coloured smarties! Adding hundreds and thousands also gives an Elmer effect.
The Aerodynamics of Biscuits by Claire Helen Walsh and Sophia Toulaitou
Biscuits and cheese both feature heavily in this story about Oliver and a crew of pirate mice. We combined cheese and biscuits to bake cheesy biscuit rockets (the recipe is in the blogpost).
Lucy’s Secret Reindeer by Anne Booth and Sophie Williams
After reading Lucy’s Secret Reindeer we baked Christmas Cookies using the recipe in the back of the book – they tasted absolutely delicious. There is also a recipe for Reindeer Cupcakes included.
Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat by Ursula Moray Williams
Our chocolate shortbread cats were inspired by Gobbolino. The silver balls from the eyes melted to give her a spooky Halloween look!
Mango and Bambang by Polly Faber and Clara Vulliamy
Mango manages to entice Bambang the tapir back to her flat with the promise of her favourite food, banana pancakes. We made vegan banana pancakes using gluten free flour. The recipe is in the blogpost – the pancakes are really delicious!
Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler
The witch’s plait inspired us to practise our plaiting skills. Baking bread was a fun way of doing this and we plaited loaves and rolls!
Happy Birthday Old Bear / Little Bear’s Trousers by Jane Hissey
We wanted to bake a birthday cake for Old Bear’s 30th birthday so we chose one of our favourite Old Bear characters. We made Little Bear with his red trousers – the braces were my daughter’s idea!
Have you ever been inspired to bake after reading? We’d love to hear which stories inspired your baking!
Enjoy National Baking Week!
Oh what fabulous bakes and brilliant books to accompany them! Thanks for sharing with #ReadWithMe
It’s great when a book inspires our baking :o)
Some lovely baking ideas. We sometimes bake Gingerbread Men here #readwithme
Lots of fairytales inspire baking – The Three Bears (porridge), Hansel and Gretel (gingerbread houses) and Little Red Riding Hood’s picnic for Granny 🙂
Some fab ideas there – and LOVE those elmer biscuits 🙂 My older two are going through a real Elmer phase at the moment so might have a go at these
#readwithme
The Elmer biscuits are so easy to make 🙂 Great for an Elmer birthday party!
What wonderful ideas! I especially love the Elmer biscuits 😃 #readwithme
I love baking the Elmer biscuits too 🙂
Love these ideas! We’ve done some Big Cook Little Cook baking lately, and of course good old Gingerbread Man, but now I’m thinking we could do a whole lot more based on favourite characters from books, films etc. Very nice 😊👍x
#MMBC
Baking and books are a great combination :o) Pancake Day is coming up next week too and there are several books that include them.