Twinkle Cakes

Twinkle Kids makes handmade felt toys, T-shirts, and hair accessories. They recently sent us one of their Twinkle Cakes to review.

The cakes themselves are three tiers of upholstry foam "iced" in wool felt, and come in an 8" (diameter) x 6" (height) size and a smaller square 4" x 3" size. Twinkle Kids offers three different styles of decorations for the large cakes and four different styles for the smaller sized cakes. Each set of decorations, also made of 100% wool felt, consists of 40-50 individual pieces. Because both the decorations and the cakes' surface are made of felt, the decorations stick to the cake allowing your child (or you) hours of cake-decorating fun.

This is an open-ended toy and Z quickly found all sorts of other things she wanted to incorporate into her cake decorating. We had to stop play for lunch and the only way we could get Z to stop was to suggest that we leave the cake out as a centerpiece on the table while we ate.

The cake decorating kit is Z's (2.8 years old) first experience with felt toys so it did take a little spark by her favorite "balls" to help her understand what the cake was for. Once she figured out the idea behind it, she got really excited about it. She asked to decorate the cake again the next day, and sat in her high chair happily playing with it for half an hour.

Twinkle Cakes provide a blank canvas of sorts for a variety of activities. They can be integrated with small toys or used with other felt cut outs you might make or buy; we are planning a felt-based storytelling board with characters and bits of scenery, so we can already see some interesting crossover potential. And we haven't even gotten into using the cake for imaginary parties; once that happens, such a toy could easily become a household favorite.

Round cakes with one of three 50-piece decoration sets are $45, and the small square cakes, which come with one of four 40-piece decoration kits are $18. One of the best things about Twinkle Kids is that they sell their decoration kits separately as well as with the cakes. Decorating kits intended for the larger cakes are available for $15, and sets for the smaller cakes are $10, but either size set would work well with the larger cakes. We love the looks of the cherry blossom decorations and the Jack and the Beanstalk set. We also love the idea of making our own felt decorations - an uncommonly inexpensive way to "freshen up" a much-loved toy - and are confident Z will be interested in making her own as soon as she's ready. (The felt used in making the Twinkle Cake decorations is a much higher-quality felt than what we've found at our local hobby store; Twinkle Kids might do well to begin selling "kits" of felt, patterns, and related materials to encourage cake-owners to play a larger role in decorating their toy cakes.)

Twinkle Kids has expanded from felt cakes to include a Gingerbread House in their lineup, which is almost an even more ingenious idea. I always have the urge to make a gingerbread house around the holidays but since we eat very little candy, it seems odd to bring oodles of candy into our lives to decorate a gingerbread house. Buying a Gingerbread House from Twinkle Kids next holiday season would mean we could decorate and redecorate our seasonal house to our hearts' content!

Visit the Twinkle Kids website to check out Twinkle Kids cakes as well as their hair accessories, notecards, and T-shirts.