Jelly Babies in Bed

When I was little, I was in the Rainbows, and my Mum was a Rainbow leader. She would plan loads of fun activities for us to do, and I remember one in particular that was great fun and really easy to do. She called it “Jelly Babies in Bed”, and I decided to have a go with Georgie at the weekend, when she needed an activity to keep her busy and take her mind of her feeling poorly.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• A pack of biscuits. Hobnobs work best, because you need something strong enough to stand up to toddler’s enthusiasm.
• Jelly Babies
• Ready-to-roll icing (and a sprinkling of icing sugar to roll it out on)
• Edible decorations

And the equipment required:

• Pastry cutter – one that is slightly larger than your biscuit works best.
• Sharp knife
• Rolling pin
• A chopping board or two to roll icing out on & decorate on
• Palette knife – optional but useful for lifting up the icing

Method:

1. Roll out the icing to a couple of mm thickness
2. Using the pastry cutter, cut out a blanket for your jelly baby
3. Cut out a small rectangle of icing to serve as the pillow
4. Place the pillow onto the edge of the biscuit and press the jelly baby onto it
5. Fold down one edge of your icing blanket and place onto your jelly baby
6. Tuck your jelly baby in! Press gently all around jelly baby so the icing moulds to its shape, and sticks to the biscuit
7. Decorate to your heart’s content

We experimented with both plain & fluted pastry cutters for the blanket. Georgie preferred the “wiggly” blankets but asked for “circles” sometimes too.

I gave Georgie a couple of tubes of edible glitter gel, some sprinkles, and silver balls to decorate her blankets with. I popped the smaller decorations into fairy cake cases, using about 4 at once to make sturdy(ish) little bowls that could just be screwed up with the mangled remains of decorations inside and thrown away, once we were finished making a mess.

For older kids, you could pour out some food colouring into little bowls and give them small paintbrushes, to paint their blankets different colours & patterns.

Georgie really loved this activity and we had a lot of fun. I let her take the lead and she was being really sweet – saying goodnight to her jelly babies as she tucked them tenderly into bed. She even cuddled one or two of them first, and kissed several of them goodnight! I did think getting me to make a teeny tiny book out of icing and then reading one of her babies a goodnight story was taking it a bit far, but it was very adorable to watch.

Georgie also decided that she was going to have several twins in the mix. I was helping her to arrange the pillows on the biscuits, and then she was placing the blanket on top, which meant that several of her biscuits looked decidedly wonky – especially the more challenging double bed ones.

One of the reasons I like this activity so much is you can have the essentials sat in your cupboard and get them out one rainy afternoon for a few hours of good messy fun, with tasty results. You don’t need to cook anything but you can still teach your child about food hygiene when cooking, and talk about the shapes and colours as you decorate. As Georgie proved so well, there is the imaginative side of things too – my little girl is quite maternal and loves to tuck toys into bed, so tucking jelly babies into biscuit beds is lots of fun for her.

The combination of hobnob, icing & jelly baby actually tastes really quite nice, so you do end up with genuinely yummy treats at the end. These would make great party food, and you could even make their construction a group activity at the party.

Georgie has been happily munching her way through her biscuits since we made them, and informs me each time that she is waking her baby up… and then proceeds to bite their head off, charming.