Edible Art

I’m not an artist. If I drew a stick figure it would be immediately rushed to the emergency room for life saving efforts.

However, it doesn’t matter what type of an artist you are when you do edible art. ALL artistic efforts are acceptable — and edible!

The idea behind this art activity is to have fun ‘painting,’ to see how your painting turns out once it’s toasted, and then enjoy to eating your creation.

And the best part is that you probably already have all of the necessary supplies. You probably won’t need to purchase anything. Simply gather your supplies and your  grandchildren in your kitchen and have at it.

So what are the supplies that you need? Milk, food coloring, bread, small bowls, and a paint brush for each grandchild.

(Notice that my little granddaughter has a purple cast on her arm? She’s only 6 years old and she has had 2 broken bones already. I think her parents may be in for quite a few visits to the emergency room throughout her growing up years!)

Put a wee bit of milk in your small bowls or cups. An inch of milk is PLENTY! I used more and we had tons left over (that nobody wanted to drink . . . . ).

Decide which colors you want and then add one or two drops of food coloring in each bowl. Stir to mix in the coloring.

Give each grandchild a piece of bread and a paintbrush — and let them go to town. They simply dip their paintbrush in the milk and then draw a design on their bread.

While the intended participants were my grandchildren, my daughter couldn’t help herself. She wanted to paint some, too, so she created this heart that my granddaughter is showing off.

I wanted to paint, too. I just HAD to do a yellow smilie face and an orange flower. Yellow and orange are my favorite colors. Can you see my creations? (I also painted a blue Y for the university that I work at — mainly to tease my son-in-law who attended our main rival university and who was watching us paint!)

Here are some of our toasted efforts.

Let me tell you some of my observations of this edible art activity. First, when you have a toaster that is as old as mine, it can be rather temperamental. Meaning, it doesn’t toast bread evenly. See my yellow smilie face? The top right hand corner isn’t toasted hardly at all.

Also, if the whole piece is painted like the piece on the bottom left side in the picture above, there won’t be any space for the toaster to toast golden brown. I guess that’s okay. However, it seems to me that when there is golden brown around the design, the painted color seems to be more vibrant.

Last, you don’t want the bread to become super soggy as you paint. It ends up being a wad that doesn’t toast very well. (Our youngest granddaughter did that to one of her pieces of bread . . . Oh well. She thoroughly enjoyed herself and I guess that’s what counts.)