How to Make a Barbapapa Cake for Father’s Day

Did you happen to see the Google search image yesterday? If not, here it is:Google commemorated the comic series on its 45^th anniversary with this image. I remember growing up with these characters and now my children love them. We have the comic books, the children’s books and the videos (and the memorabilia, if we’re going to be accurate!). The books are available in many languages, but here in Montreal you will most likely find them in French (it originates from France). We are fortunate enough to have our stash from our family in Europe, so our children watch and read Barbapapa in Italian. To visit their website, click here.

If you are not familiar with Barbapapa, and you have little ones, I encourage you to go out and find some episodes. In all the episodes we’ve seen (and we’ve seen them all I think) only a few were scary for little ones. They had to do with hunters (in the end they were caught by the Barbapapa family and the police).

The premise of these goofy-looking balloon figures, is that they can change into any form, and they love animals and nature. There are a lot of life lessons in the show about taking care of nature and being a kind family. As well, the characters get into mischief and joke around, making the Barbabapa series a great one to watch with your children. If memory serves me well, we introduced the show to our children around pre-Kindergarten. The books can be introduced even earlier.

Since Father’s Day isn’t that far away, I thought I would share a simple cake you can make for the Dad in your life.

Tanti Auguri in Italian translates to “Many Congratulations” – another way of saying Happy Birthday. For other celebrations, we could just write Auguri.

How-to:

All you really need is a rectangular cake pan, and once the cake is baked and cooled, you can cut it into the form of Barbapapa (the father figure). The cake made here is a simple white cake.

I used a natural red food colouring for the icing to make a pink colour. And to make the arms and face, I filled a plastic bag with Nutella and cut a small hole in one corner to decorate. Placing candles where the hands meet is cute, and under the hands leaves plenty of room for a written message.

It was a hit with Papa MOE and the children!

And to complete the activity with your children, there is the book, In the Kitchen with Barbapapa.

I tried to search a link for the English book, but no luck. I’m sure if you do a bit more digging, you may find it. Here is a link to a French copy.

A little PS: Notice that the father figure in this family is pink? We didn’t either for a long while. But if you have some issues with gender colours in your family, this is another great reason to start reading and watching Barbapapa. All colours, boys and girls. Love that.