Cake and Soft Play Do You Know?

# There are lots of things

# All around us

# Exciting things that surround us

# But how does it work?

# Do you know?

# How is it made?

# Do you know?

# Things that go up

# Things that go down

# Things that go pop

# Things that go round

# With special cameras

# To show you inside

# It's going to be a big surprise

# But how does it work?

# Do you know?

# How is it made?

# Do you know?

# Do you know?

# Let's find out! #

Hello, I'm Maddie, and today I'm getting ready for a birthday party.

Have you been to a birthday party? They're really fun, aren't they?

Birthdays can be celebrated in lots of different ways.

You might play fun birthday games or sing birthday songs or

eat special food.

But, there's something else that you might find at a birthday party.

Can you guess what it is?

That's right, it's a cake.

One of my favourites is called Victoria sponge.

I love all of the jam and cream inside it.

And these bits are called sponge.

Sponge is made from lots of different ingredients,

like milk, flour, butter,

eggs and sugar.

But do you know how sponge becomes thick, lovely and bouncy,

just like this?

How does a cake work?

Let's find out.

To show you how a cake works,

I'm going to bake a cake for the party.

Now, I need to mix all of our ingredients together in a big bowl.

In goes the sugar with the flour,

and then the butter.

And now, for the fun bit -

cracking the eggs.

And the milk.

Oh, and we mustn't forget this.

This is called baking powder

and it's a special ingredient that will make sure our cake rises

in the oven.

Now, we need to mix all our ingredients together.

And for that, we need an electric whisk.

Watch this.

WHIRRING

Because it works really quickly,

it's going to put lots of air bubbles into the mix.

WHIRRING

Listen to the sound of the electric whisk.

WHIRRING GETS LOUDER

It's like an aeroplane taking off.

OK, have a look in my bowl now.

Can you see that all of the different ingredients have

been mixed together into a smooth, runny mixture?

I'm just pouring our mixture into two cake moulds,

ready to go into a hot oven.

The oven is hot.

You should never go near a hot oven yourself -

always ask a grown-up to do it.

When cake mix goes into a hot oven,

it starts to bake.

It will rise and get bigger and bigger and turn into

a tasty sponge, but to find out how, we need to get a closer look.

When the ingredients are mixed together, they start to change.

This is called a chemical reaction.

First, the baking powder and the milk start to react together,

making bubbles of air.

The air bubbles are surrounded by a layer of fat

from the butter, which traps them inside the mixture.

Then, when the mixture goes into the oven, the hot air inside

makes the egg white surround each bubble and go hard.

This protects the bubbles so that they don't burst.

As the mixture heats up more,

the trapped air bubbles start to get bigger.

As they grow, the flour in the mixture around them starts to

stretch. It stretches and stretches until it can't stretch any more.

And by then, the cake is ready.

It's really clever, isn't it?

My cake takes 20 minutes to bake, so I'm going to use my special

camera to do something called a time-lapse.

This means we can film something that takes a long time,

but when we watch it back we can see it happening really quickly.

Right, the camera is in place,

so we've got to wait 20 minutes until the cake is ready.

You can see how the cake mixture is very flat to start and now watch...

Look how the cake is growing.

TIMER ALARM RINGS

I think it's ready.

Perfect!

Sponge number one.

And sponge number two.

The sponges have got so much bigger and they smell fantastic.

Look.

They've risen by about this much.

That's three centimetres.

Now, I just need to add the finishing touches to our cake.

I loved seeing how cake works.

What was your favourite bit?

Do you remember the special ingredient that made the cake rise

when it reacted to the milk?

It's baking powder.

Did you hear the sound of the electric whisk?

WHIRRING

And did you see the way the cake rose in the oven?

So, now you know how a cake works.

And you know all about the special chemical reaction that

happens inside the cake, and how the air bubbles make the cake rise.

And, if we cut into the cake, you'll see that the air bubbles

are still there, and that's what makes the sponge nice and fluffy.

Can you see all of the little air bubbles?

This cake looks like it's going to be yummy.

I love having parties at my house,

but you can have parties in lots of different places.

In the garden, in a park, a swimming pool.

I can think of another place you might have a party.

Do you know what it is?

It's a soft play centre.

Brilliant!

I like crawling through the rollers and running through the tubes.

And...

playing in the ball pool!

But, do you know how all of these things in

a soft play centre are made?

Let's find out!

To find out, I've come here, to a soft play factory.

They make lots of soft play items here.

They come in different shapes and sizes, lots of different

bright colours and, of course, they're all soft - even the floor.

Let's see how they make the floor.

Like all the soft play items made here,

the floor pads start off with this.

It's a material called PVC.

It's really shiny, isn't it?

This is Sarah and she's going to cut out all the pieces we need

to make a floor pad.

She starts by drawing a big square on the PVC.

This will be the top of the floor pad.

The square is then cut out.

Listen to the sound of the scissors.

SCRAPING

Next, Sarah cuts out the bottom of the floor pad

and then the sides.

Once all the pieces have been cut out, they need to be sewn together.

And that happens here.

Maria is going to use a sewing machine to

sew all the pieces together.

Maria is sewing the floor pad inside out.

She does this so that when it's turned the right way out,

all of the stitches are hidden and it looks lovely and neat.

The zip, here, is where the filling is going to go inside.

It's a bit like a bigger version of a cushion cover on a sofa.

To make the floor pad soft and squishy,

the skin is filled with a material called foam.

There are a lot of different types of foam,

but this is the foam that they use for a floor pad.

Can you see that, when I squeeze it, it's soft and squishy?

Let's use my special microscope camera to get

a closer look at the foam.

Whoa, look at that!

That is incredible!

Can you see that there are lots and lots of tiny gaps?

Well, those gaps are actually bubbles of air

and it's the air that makes the foam soft and squishy,

so it's safe to play and jump around on.

Before the foam can be put in the cover,

Colin turns it the right way round.

Look, now all the seams are hidden inside and the edges

look really neat.

Now the foam can go inside the cover.

The foam has to reach every little corner,

but Colin makes it look easy.

Brilliant!

All zipped up, and here we have one finished floor pad.

But, a soft play centre needs more than just floor pads.

This is a parrot you can sit and rock on, like this.

It's really fun, isn't it?

Shall we see how the parrot's made?

Let's find out.

The rocking parrot is made with the same PVC material - the only

difference is that, this time, Sarah is going to use a template.

This is a template.

Can you see it's the same shape as the rocking parrot?

The template is placed onto the material and Sarah draws

around it with a pencil.

She then uses a tool called a scalpel

to carefully cut out the shape.

So, to make the parrot,

there are two side pieces like this one and the top part, where you sit.

But, the rocking parrot also needs some smaller pieces like...

the eyes and...

..a beak and...

..the wings.

But the wings look a little plain, don't they?

Tony is doing something called airbrushing,

to finish off the wings.

The airbrush sucks up paint through tube into the nozzle.

Then, air is blown through the nozzle to put paint

out the end in a fine mist.

Tony now glues the smaller pieces onto the parrot's body.

It's really starting to look like a parrot now.

And then all the pieces are sewn together.

Now, the parrot is ready for the next stage.

Thank you.

Colin's turning the parrot cover the right way out.

Do you remember what we need next?

That's right, it's the foam.

But, which bit of foam should we use for the rocking parrot? Hmm?

This one. It's nice and squishy.

All Colin has to do now is put the foam inside the cover.

It's a bit of a squeeze.

And there we go.

One finished parrot.

It looks great, doesn't it? Ready for someone to play on.

What was your favourite bit about seeing how soft play items are made?

Do you remember the name of the material used to stuff

the floor pad and parrot?

That's right, it's called foam.

Did you hear the sound of the scissors as they cut

the PVC material?

SCRAPING

And did you see all the air bubbles when we looked at the foam

with my special camera?

And so, the next time you come to a soft play area like this...

Whee!

..you'll know how it's made.

And now you know how cakes work,

so you can tell all your friends and family about the chemical reaction

that happens inside the cake to make it rise.

Woohoo!

See you next time!

# There are lots of things

# All around us

# Exciting things that surround us

# But how does it work?

# Do you know?

# How is it made?

# Do you know?

# Do you know?

# Let's find out! #