Baking was big in 2013 here in the UK, thanks in large part to TV show The Great British Bake Off. But kids have always loved getting messy with flour and pastry.

Shiny Bakery is a new iPhone and iPad app that won’t leave your kitchen requiring a three-hour cleanup. It’s the work of developer Shiny Things, whose Quick Maths+ app we enjoyed last year.

Maths is still the focus here. Well, counting. It aims to get 2-5 year-old children “counting, measuring, dividing and sequencing” by running their own bakery, cooking cakes then dividing them up for hungry customers.

There’s also a lot of creativity involved, as kids get to decorate their baked items with virtual icing, sprinkles and other sweet treats. Shiny Things reckons that watching the reactions of the in-game customers will also teach your children about emotions and fair sharing.

Of course, there’s also the way it may get your children interested in real-world baking too: if they make something tasty-looking in Shiny Bakery, they may want to recreate it in your kitchen.

Some of our favourite apps stimulate real-world activities in this way: for example, our four year-old insisted on mixing different coloured waters last week after playing the Toca Lab app.

Shiny Bakery costs £0.69 for iPhone and iPad on Apple’s App store.