Clay Cakes

Access the full lesson with vocab, teacher instructions, and step-by-step student instructions!

When I first found out that clay slip could be used in frosting bags and piped onto clay, I was so excited to have my students try it! It is a seriously fun way to get a lot of detail onto clay without actually doing the sculpting, so it works really great with middle school classes in particular.

The trick to this technique is getting the consistency of the slip just right. If it is too watery, it won’t take shape, and if it’s too hard, it won’t get pushed through the frosting tip. However, I find it pretty easy to get the right consistency because I just either grab it from the clay mixer or keep a bucket next to the pottery wheels so that slip can be scraped off of student’s hands after they finish working on the wheel. The right consistency is something like the consistency of yogurt. It does not drip. Then, when all of the frosting bags and tips are loaded with the slip, I keep the bags in a tupperware after each class so that the consistency is kept.

It’s also a super fun project because the cakes can be themed—students love to creatively tell a story through their cake. Watching a cake decorating competition is a great way to start this unit—and it gets students hyped to make their own versions.

Let me know how it goes with your classes!