Respect the Pasta Challenge 5: Creative and Kids

Those of you following the challenges we've been doing with ASK Italian will know that ASK Italian are on a mission to get people to #RespectThePasta by giving pasta the respect it deserves.

We kicked off with a fantastic meal out at ASK Italian to Respect the cook, followed by our second challenge which was 'Doing it right' where we prepared a pasta dish following Theo Randall's Pasta Rules. The third challenge was 'Re-respecting the Pasta' where we recreated the "Fettuccine Con Verdure" recipe from the ASK Italian Cookbook. Challenge four involved making ravioli from scratch and now here we are for the last of our challenges with Challenge 5: Creative and Kids.

As pasta has become a huge focus in our lives over the past few weeks we wanted to end the #RespectThePasta blogposts with a grand finale where we have got the kids involved in not one, not two, but a whopping 3 pasta projects!

One of the most interesting facts we discovered as part of the challenges is that there are over 600 different types of pasta and we want to pay homage to this fact in our final challenge. 

Pasta Art Project

So we used lots of different types of pasta in our 'art and craft' project with the kids making some pasta art. We used spaghetti, penne, tortiglioni, macaroni, fusilli and farefalle. This is so simple to do but looks really impressive!

You need: Lots of types of pasta, a cardboard heart covered in glue, a blank canvas

Stick the pasta onto the heart shape

Finally stick the heart onto your canvas to finish your 'pasta art'.

Painted Pasta Necklace

Miss T didn't want to miss out on the fun so she got to paint some different types of pasta in different colours and then practiced her threading skills making a necklace for herself and for her doll Milly.

But we couldn't finish without eating some pasta for our final challenge too. We love the fact that the #RespectThePasta campaign is all about reminding people just how amazing pasta is. What better way to celebrate than to create our very own types of pasta to add to the list of 600 existing types of pasta out there. 

Inventing new types of pasta

We enjoyed making our own pasta for our 'Respect from Scratch' challenge so we used the pasta recipe from the ASK Italian cookbook (see the recipe here), and let the kids get creative making their own pasta shapes. We also added some puréed beetroot to make our pasta even more exiting as it turns the pasta dough pink! 

Using cookie cutters, D made some star shaped pasta, J wanted teddy bear shaped pasta, and Miss T made hearts of all different sizes. For the smaller hearts she used an icing cutter. 

And as a big thank you to ASK Italian for the opportunity to be part of their amazing #RespectThePasta campaign, what better than making our very own #RespectThePasta pasta! 

You can find details of our previous #RespectThePasta blogposts below:

The Challenge begins: Life is a combination of Magic and Pasta!
Challenge One: Respect the Cook
Challenge Two: Doing it right
Challenge Three: Re-Respecting the Pasta
Challenge Four: Respect from Scratch

And always remember to RESPECT THE ...

...PASTA!

Disclosure: We have been taking part in various blogger challenges set by ASK Italian as part of their #RespectThePasta campaign. All opinions are our own.