I started, where I always start, with the cupcakes. I am a huge cupcake fanatic and love any excuse to make them. My first idea involved a main cake, rectangular, flat and covered in grass frosting with the white lines of the field surrounded by my cupcakes that at first were topped with pristine marzipan to look like soccer balls themselves. As I am in my mid twenties and don't like marzipan, I doubt many 5yr olds will either, so that idea was benched. Next I concentrated more on the cupcakes themselves, without worrying about a main centrepiece cake. That, and the bolt of lightening that reminded me of chocolates wrapped to resemble soccer balls; freed me to decide on grass frosting covered cupcakes with a little soccer ball on top. Easy. As to a main cake, or candle cake as I am starting to think of them, I dreamed up a two layered vanilla sponge covered in grass frosting and topped with an appropriate number 5 candle and possibly yet another soccer ball. Do I have to explain just how much money is saved by using pre-made soccer ball candy rather than having them made from marzipan? Or how much easier than making marzipan soccer balls yourself?
I had my cake and centrepiece down, now to think about food and candy!
Thinking along the lines of a party I had previously seen online, I wanted to go with foods you would normally find at a soccer game. But as I don't have a clue as to what that might be I drew upon my very limited knowledge of footy food and baseball food. Unfortunately neither are very reliable because the last footy game I went to was more than a decade ago and the only baseball games I've ever seen were on TV, most of them were in sitcoms. In the end I came up with mini hot dogs, mini pizzas, and chips in a cone.
Hot dogs are dead easy, any one can do them you just have to find small enough buns. Mini pizzas was a fun idea I had just before dozing off one night. I like to make everything easier and cheaper to make so I came up with a brilliant plan of taking two 12" pizza bases the pita bread companies make and using a medium cookie cutter, cut out as many mini pizza bases as you can; top them with pizza sauce, and whatever simple toppings the kids will eat and give them a quick grill, my thinking is they should only take 5 minutes to cook as they are so small. Everyone makes chips, whether its in the oven or the fryer, but by themselves they have no pizazz, so why not take a piece of paper and curl it into a cone to hold a portion of chips? Maybe even add a fish stick or two if there aren't any kids coming with seafood allergies, with that I could even use newspaper for the cones!
Candy is another matter entirely. I love to make candy and I love to eat candy. Its no help that the Internet is full of brilliant people coming up with new ways to load us up with sugary treats! I love smores and think they are the best thing for little boys, so they went on the list. They can be made ahead of time on simple arrowroot biscuits with Nutella instead of melted chocolate. I thought of Nutella because the chocolate will harden again where the Nutella will stay soft and creamy. I also like the look of smooshed burnt marshmallow so I'm thinking, why not use the round side of a spoon to smoosh the marshmallow down after browning it with a flame gun or running it under the grill.
The idea of shot glasses of milk and a cookie is one of the sweetest things I have seen on the net recently and I immediately wanted to incorporate it into this party. I thought of using smaller than average glasses, or tall shot glasses, with a cut down red striped paper straw in for effect; next to each glass place a matching height pile of mini Oreos to go with it. You could tie the cookies together like a parcel or simply dab a bit of icing in between to hold them in place till the children get their hands on them.
To finish off the food and goodies, I decided on simple and cheap juice boxes surrounded by coloured paper cuffs to hide there unappealing labels and make them fit in better with the motif. I thought of plates and napkins to match the juice box colours, all from the favoured team colours, but am not so sure kids that young will really use/need them.
All this food and candy has to go on a table of course and my idea was to use a disposable plastic tablecloth in green and use tape to mark out the field markings, effectively turning the buffet table into a soccer field. Could even go so far as to make little goals for either end out of straws.
wii to keep the kids amused as this birthday will be in winter, but otherwise I would say: "send them outside for a real game!"
Last on my mind was invitations and I always returned to keeping it simple. Circular cards with a soccer ball on the front and party info on the back is easy and it only gets easier if you make it up with the computer and print them all out together or take them to a professional printer like Office Works.
Well, that is my brainstorm for a soccer inspired children's party, I'm really hoping it will turn out as cute and fun as it seems in my head!
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