My 9 year old daughter came home with a project topic for her life orientation class based on the Food Pyramid. For those of you not familiar with the Food Pyramid (although I’m sure we all covered this in school), it’s an illustration of the breakdown of food into the 5 major food groups. The project brief was to design and build a visual aid clearly depicting the Food Pyramid. The children were to be encouraged to be creative and origional.
The last part of the brief was music to my daughter’s ears as creative should have been her middle name, she came bounding into the house announcing her project and then her idea … “Mom, we are going to build a pyramid out of cereal treats, dirty ice it and cover it in fondant” – (insert sound of a vinyl record screeching to a halt) … stop the bus! someone has been watching waaaaay too much Cake Boss and my middle name is NOT Buddy! But when it comes to my daughter there’s no saying no, once she has her head and heart set on something she’s all in. This is a trait I admire in her but it has really put me through my paces in the past trying to keep up with her many grand ideas. Once she had forced her idea on me and unable to say no, we sat down and began planning out her project. Let the project begin!
Rice Crispy Treat Recipe
Ingredients
- 62.5g Butter, cut into blocks
- 300g Marshmallows
- 150g Rice Crispies
Method
- Put the butter and marshmallows into a microwaveable bowl.
- Microwave until the marshmallows have melted, mixing regularly, otherwise the mixture will over-flow leaving a sticky mess behind.
- Once the mixture has come to the boil and turned opaque, remove from the microwave.
- Mix the marshmallow mixture with the Rice Crispies until the Rice Crispies are evenly covered. This takes a little muscle.
- Pour and press the Rice Crispy mixture into a greased baking tray and then take a rolling pin and roll over it so it’s evenly pressed into the tray – tip: spray and cook your hands and rolling pin, this stops the mixture from sticking to them.
- Leave it to set. Once set, tip it out and cut into whatever sized pieces you require.
For my daughter’s project, we doubled this recipe to fill one 40x40cm tray which was to be the size of the base of the pyramid. Then we had to make 13 trays. This required 2kg of butter, 8kg of marshmallows and 4.8kg of Rice Crispies, making me the center of attention as I loaded my trolley with 20 packets of marshmallows, on top of the 8 large boxes of Rice Crispies and 4 blocks of Rama and wheeled my way to the checkout counter at Makro.
The ‘Dirty Icing’, as Buddy calls it (Cake Boss star), is apparently just a simple butter icing to which I added one egg white as per the directions of a friend who is also a chef – no arguing there.
Dirty Icing Recipe
Ingredients
- 150g butter, softened
- 375g icing sugar
- 40ml cream
- 1 egg white
- food colouring of choice
Method
- Beat the butter, icing sugar, cream and egg white together until smooth.
- Once smooth add your food colouring until you achieve the required colour.
This icing is my children’s favourite as it is both smooth and creamy and just yummy! – for kiddies cake icing, that is!
The last part of this enormous project was the fondant. I have to be honest here, I looked at a few recipes, I even ‘You-Tubed’ it, as you do these days, but decided the process was way too complicated and opted to rather head down to my favourite Party Shop in Springfield Park – the best party shop in Durban and only recently discovered by myself making me a laggard, but rather late than never, right!
Let me tell you, this pyramid was no small feat! I spent the entire day making the required 13 trays of Rice Crispy treats, which were spread out around the house on sheets of wax paper and all my doors firmly closed to keep out the marauding monkeys. As per Jade’s plan, she arrived home from school, we stacked the Rice Crispies, carved them into a pyramid, Dirty Iced it and covered one side with fondant – this last part was not exactly within the plan, I unfortunately miscalculated how much fondant was required and stood to attention while receiving a lecture from my disgruntled 9 year old, who then came up with a new plan to cover the back with sprinkles, phew, close call. Jade added the final and most important touch which was to draw (using food colouring kokis) the food group breakdown onto the Fondant.
Hey presto, the project was completed and weighed in at around 15kg earning Jade a whopping 93% and a very happy, sugared-up school. My work as a mom done, I made a mental note to try a little harder at simplifying my daughter’s grand ideas, but the excitement and happiness expressed by her tells me I’ll be back in this position again – as you do when you’re a mom!
Durban Dining 