We love getting creative in the kitchen and the new Real Baking range by Vivid Imaginations is designed to help you to get creative with your kids. The range includes a cookie kit, cake pops and the great baking kit which comes with a fancy egg cracker. The main product in the range though is the Chocolate Pen.
Included in this year’s top toys list at the Dream Toys event I went to earlier this week, the Real Baking Chocolate Pen allows kids to draw with chocolate.
In the box, you are sent a couple of plastic trays, the chocolate pen, some clear bags and the clips and nozzles that fit on the bags as well as the instructions. The chocolate does not come with the set.
Now whilst talking about the chocolate I think it is fair to warn you that after watching the advert and looking at the box your children will want to make multicoloured chocolate creations and obviously it is not every day that you see pink chocolate so I would definitely recommend that you hunt down some cake melts to have ready for when you give them the set. This was a real negative point for me as I felt all of the advertising pointed towards these coloured creations when in reality they could have made some great examples using white, milk and dark chocolate which would be a lot more realistic for us parents to help the kids to achieve.
Anyway, the chocolate pen takes 2 AAA batteries which are not included. To get started you add your chocolate to the clear bags and place them into some warm water to melt.
Once melted you fold up the ends and place the bag into the chocolate pen. If your chocolate is too warm it will drip out of the end which is what happened to me the first time so be prepared for that. Once it had cooled a bit then I was able to use the chocolate pen as it had been designed. Pressing the button on the pen slowly squeezed out the chocolate into the mould (you can also do this onto some baking paper if you don’t want to use the moulds).
I was a little bit impatient and didn’t wait for the different colours to dry before adding the next one in so they didn’t look the best but they were quick and easy to do and there were a variety of designs including some fabulous Christmas ones.
Once the chocolates had chilled they were ready to serve and I have to say they did look good enough to eat.
Now they are not the multicoloured creations that can be found on the box and I suppose you could just use a piping bag with a small hole in it to create the same effect but the girls loved it and enjoyed being able to control the chocolate coming out at the right speed.
If you have kids who love to get creative in the kitchen then I would say that the Chocolate pen is something they would enjoy using.