Monday, December 20, 2010

Edible Chess: Food for the Mind AND the Tummy

My library copy of Candy Construction is a dangerous book to leave around when there are little readers about. We've already made the Rice Krispy Treat Christmas trees (perfection!) and the edible chocolate play dough (the messiest project that I've ever made, and it didn't even turn out that great, but I'm going to give it a second shot, anyway), and when Willow spied the edible chessboard, it didn't take long before Sydney and I were in the kitchen, mixing up a big batch of made-from-scratch brownies and a big batch of made-from-scratch blondies.

The brownies and blondies are supposed to be cut into perfect squares, then arranged in a chessboard pattern. Willow cut all the treats into (sort of) identical small squares--
--and then Matt helped them arrange the pieces into chessboard formation on our extra-large cutting board.

And then, to play!
 
Often, when Will and I play chess, Sydney wants to play, too. Sydney and I play as a team, and we take turns making the move when it's our turn. This evens out my play with Willow quite a bit, because I can guarantee you that if I have a tricky little trap set up, Sydney will sacrifice my queen or expose my king before I can spring it:
 It took a lot of persuasion to keep the girls from nibbling away the chessboard while we played just one game:
By the second game, we made up a rule that if a square gets eaten, then it no longer exists as part of the chessboard. That's a rule that's sure to liven things up! It has excellent strategic potential:
It probably wouldn't surprise you to discover that there wasn't enough chessboard left for a third game.

2 comments:

Miranda Jacobs said...

Oh my gawd! That looks so delicious. We don't know how to play chess, but might see how checkers goes. Mmmm.

julie said...

Checkers are even easier, because you get to use sandwich cookies for the pieces. Willow REALLY wanted to make chess pieces out of candy, but I was all, "Um...maybe not five days before Christmas." That sounds like another all-day snowstorm nothing else to craft like made project.