playdough

By Contributor Allison Baltzersen

Every child eats play dough.  It’s a rite of passage.  It’s just not a very delicious one.  Until now.  Edible Sweet Art is flavored sugar dough that is actually designed to be eaten.  We received the Cupcake and Lollipop kits to test and review.

The boxes say the kits are fun for children age 6+.  We quickly realized this is because the fondant dough is firm and requires quite a bit of hand strength to knead.  The dough is also meant to be shaped quickly into its final decorative form and then eaten.  This is not dough to be man-handled repeatedly and saved in tubs like typical play dough for younger children.

edible sweet art

Each of our kits (the Cupcake and Lollipop) contained four small packages of dough, a rolling pin, paint brush, and variety of plastic cutting tools like animal-shaped and flower-shaped cutters.  Each kit also came with guide sheets with step-by-step photo instructions on how to make decorations using all of the tools in the box.

Edible Sweet Art is a clever idea and has won several awards for creativity.  It helps develop sensory and motor skills and gives kids a good idea of what working with real fondant in a bakery is like.   Like real fondant, the dough dries rapidly and becomes crumbly to the touch after about an hour exposed to air. While the plastic tools can be reused, the dough is really only meant to be played with once, which makes it more expensive than standard play dough.

As a green mama, I cringe reading the ingredient list – a mix of sugar, corn starch, artificial sweeteners and artificial colors – but the dough is FDA approved so isn’t immediately harmful to eat.  Thankfully, the smell of the dough is pleasantly fruity but not screaming, “eat me!”  so it didn’t occur to my preschooler to put any in her mouth.  I tasted a little and it’s delightfully sweet.  These Edible Sweet Art kits are perfect gifts for tweens who dream of being on Cupcake Wars and want practice working with fondant decorations.

edible playdough

I wouldn’t encourage my child to take a big bite of this stuff.  That said, playing with this stuff is good fun.

These Edible Sweet Art kits from AMAV run between $6 – $20 and are available at Toys R Us, Amazon.com, Bed Bath + Beyond, Kmart and Hobby Lobby.  For more information and to check out all of their products, visit www.amav.com.

edible playdough

Disclosure: I received a sample of a product to facilitate my review. No other compensation was provided and all views and opinions stated on this post are 100% my own.

Allison Baltzersen  is a mother of two baby girls and blogs about her bumblings through green parenting over at Funny Shade of Green.