Bashing baked cotton balls (goggles optional!)

I first read about baked cotton balls at Time for Play and have also seen a post on them at Play Create Explore.  It looked like fun and as the boys more than enjoy smashing with hammers I thought I'd give it a go!

This turned out to be a fun two stage activity as first we had to make the balls which I did with Champ whilst Bud was out at his swimming lesson with Hubby.  Then we had even more fun bashing the balls once baked.  Here's what we did.....

First Champ and I assembled all our ingredients (plain flour & water in equal parts and a splash of food colouring).  Then Champ mixed everything up which he did really well then I did a bit of extra mixing to get out any lumps.

We had three different colours - yellow, blue and grey - due to the only colours I had in the cupboard!

Then Champ got dipping the cotton wool balls.  This part was trickier than I'd imagined as dipping in wasn't too bad, but to also coat the underside he found a little tricky (and messy).  So I got him to do three or four balls in each colour and held back a bit of the mixture.  He placed these on a baking sheet lined with baking paper.

This is the end result of Champs handiwork.  Not bad for a 2 year old, but a bit stuck together so I did a bit of rearranging and used up the rest of the mixture which meant we got a few more balls completed.

Ahhhh, much tidier.  Not bad for a 34 year old!  Then I baked them on a low heat (about 150C) for about 45mins.

And here they are!  I think I over cooked them a bit as if you follow the blogs where I read about this originally their colours are a lot more vibrant.  Plus where they were on the baking tray they have flat bottoms, but that didn't stop the fun!  They basically go hard on the outside, but remain soft and fluffy on the inside, perfect for bashing!

The boys had heaps of fun bashing these with a toy hammer.  Only downside, we didn't make nearly enough of them!

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