Ilana's 13th Birthday

   Recently I overtook my fiance's little sister's 13th birthday when asked to simply make a cake. I couldn't help myself! 13! Oh, the possibilities! I ended up deciding on a very sophisticated chocolate brown, and soft pink, with silver accents. This all got resolved after I had decided on the cupcakes of course. Once I had them down, everything else was relatively easy.

 {that's their mum is the background!}

   I made moist chocolate cupcakes with blush pink frosting sprinkled with silver glitter and silver balls. They tasted incredible, and whats better than awesome tasting cake? Cheap, easy, awesome tasting cake. I used a packet mix from the supermarket for the easy, but when I went to buy it, they were on sale for $2! A bag of icing sugar and a block of butter; and I was done, I had everything else at home.

{my cupcake}

    I wanted something really feminine and classy for her candle cake, so I made a smallish but tall double layer chocolate cake with the same pink frosting that I spent god knows how long smoothing out and then piped pearls of frosting around the base. As carefully as possible I piped pearls up the sides in an ever decreasing number and then, with tweezers, I placed a silver ball on every one of those pearls. I tried to make a little mound on the top with frosting so when I covered it with silver it would look like a much larger pile of silver bling, but unfortunately I was off center by a bit. No one really noticed until I pointed it out, so maybe I should have kept my mouth shut... Piped on a big 13, and then went to town on it with all my glitters and gels to make it pop so that in the end all the cake needed was the simplest silver candles I could find and a couple of sparklers.

 

{the candle cake}

   Got my colours down, got my cake down, time for candy! I desperately wanted to do cake pops because I see them all over the Internet and had never made them before, so I bought a chocolate mud from the store--I would never be able to destroy a cake I have baked--and totally annihilated it. They're dipped in dark chocolate and pink vanilla candy melts with the same silver sprinkles as the cakes. I did half with pink on top and half with chocolate on top just to keep it interesting. Using the remaining chocolate and candy melts I dipped marshmallows and decorated them to match, and using a recipe I found I made chocolate filled meringue kisses but I died them a very slight pink. Everything tasted soooo good I made myself sick eating it.

{all hand made by me}

    As well as the candy I made I also bought some other treats because this was a slumber party and you have to keep the sugar high going through the night. There were strawberry Oreos, marshmallow twists, musk sticks, mini lammingtons, pink and white Pascals mushrooms, caramel filled Hershey kisses, raspberries, and the cutest pink barbie coins. Unfortunately my photographer was too distracted by a pint sized puppy to take as many shots as I would like and a lot of details didn't get shot...

{my table}

   Luckily I found lots of decorations for cheap like the pink faux 'mums from Ikea for a dollar each, and the feather boas. The brown cloth is a bed sheet I have, and I already had all the glass wear, cake stands, and vase. Most of the little details like the mirrors and the silver beads came from a $2 shop and the paper flowers I made myself.

{gotta love balloons}

   Everybody must love balloons so I had to have them, there's something about a helium filled balloon that just says "smile". In the end my table and cakes were a big success and the girls had a blast, so I was  pretty proud of myself, wonky cake decorating and all...

P.S.

   The puppy got in on the action too!

Hunter's 5th Birthday Soccer Party

   So, I was recently asked by a friend "can you plan a soccer party?" My first thought was to my deep dread of all things sport related and the gaping hole that leaves in my knowledge. Quickly I found the more I thought about it, the more ideas I did actually have. In the end it only took two or three days to pull together an adorable soccer themed buffet table, filled with tasty treats made specifically to suit tiny 5 year old hands.

   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!