As we studied Ancient Rome in our homeschool, I looked for fun ways we could use food/snacks to further our learning. I love doing this because we already eat every day – so adding a food activity doesn’t take much extra time out of our day.
I was searching on Pinterest and came across a recipe for building a Roman road as a dessert – Now, this is my kind of activity. The problem was I couldn’t understand the reasoning behind the food choices, and honestly it didn’t seem like it tasted that great to me.
So, I brainstormed a few ideas of how to put one together, and we successfully learned about and ate a Roman road in the process!
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All about the Ancient Roman roads
I highly recommend doing a little research with your kiddos before jumping in to do this. It will make a lot more sense as you complete the process. We used a few YouTube videos and some of our library books to learn about the building of the roads.
Almost every Ancient Rome library book had a little something about the roads, so that was easy to find. We used this reference book which is very kid-friendly and has great pictures with easy-to-read bits of text.
The best video we watched was an animated video, but it really broke down the process of how the roads were built. This is what I based my recipe on, so be sure to check it out after you glance at the recipe and it will hopefully all make sense.
Supplies
- Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
- Oreos
- Golden Oreos
- Brownie Mix (and the ingredients needed to make it)
- Ziplock Bags
- 8×8 Pan
- Rolling Pin (for smashing cookies)
Just as a heads up, our grocery store had a large, family-sized package of generic creme-filled cookies (that look like Oreos). It came with both regular and golden cookies so to save money, I purchased it. I kind of wish we would’ve used the brand name cookies, but all in all we still learned a lot and the product was delicious!
Setting the curb
First we used the chocolate chip cookie dough to set the curb. We tore off small pieces of the dough and shaped them into little cylinder-like pieces. Then, we placed them along two sides of the pan to create the curb, just as the Romans would have done in stone.
Large Stone Layer
To keep it simple, this part is also made of the cookie dough. We tore off little chunks to represent the large stone foundation that was laid between the curbs.
Smaller Stone Layers
The next step in the road building process was laying smaller stones and sand on top of the larger stones. This would fill in gaps and create a solid foundation. We did a couple different cookie varieties for this.
First, we put chocolate oreos in a bag and crushed them into chunks using a rolling pin. After sprinkling those on top, we filled a bag with vanilla oreos. The vanilla oreos were crushed into a sand-like powder.
Finally to bind everything together, we mixed a box of brownies together and poured it all on top – YUM!
We had a few extra cookies left so we decided to take some of the cookie pieces and break them up. These were used to look like cobble stones on top of the road.
I pretty much followed the time on the brownie box to bake these. Be sure to let them cool all the way and then get ready to cut inside and see all the layers! What’s incredible is I was certain the brownie mix would mix all throughout the dessert, and it really didn’t.
But doesn’t that just prove the uniqueness and success of the actual Roman roads? Those things were solid! No wonder some of them are still around today.
This was such a fun little cooking experiment for us. It doesn’t hurt that they were absolutely delicious to eat, as well!
If you’re studying Ancient Rome, give this dessert a try! Snap a picture and tag me on Instagram @simply.learning.together I love to see other families learning together!
Check out all of the activities we did while studying Ancient Rome in my blog post.
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