29 days till Christmas… yep, that freaked me out too! But in my house, we have the Energizer Bunny version of the Festive Season: with all four of our birthdays falling like dominoes each month from October to January, and our Wedding Anniversary on Christmas Eve (not to mention a dozen or so birthdays in the extended family) the festivities just keep on going and going and going.
The best (and worst!) thing about this crazy time of year is planning the kid's birthday parties. I love the baking and cake decorating, the planning and searching of the interwebs for party ideas. But I don't do anything by halves! On party-eve, I'm always up at some ungodly hour of the morning, still working my magic on the sugar-and-food-colouring on chocolate-cake masterpiece that will become the birthday cake. Sometimes the magic is less than forth coming. Stressful? You bet! Rewarding? Absolutely!
With a just-turned-six-year-old, and a nearly-thirteen-year-old, I've had plenty of birthday parties to plan and pull off. But last year, for some reason, with the momentous occasion of the Young Lad's 5th birthday looming (which was to be his first "proper" party, with friends from preschool and all the hoopla) I felt at a complete loss as to what to do. I'd never planned a party for little boys before. What do they do at a party?? I took home book after book on party games, party food, party themes, and of course party cakes. But the clock was ticking, and I still hadn't figured out what to do-oo when (miracle of miracles) Step-by-step Kids' Birthday Cakes fell into my hands.
I showed the Young Lad the Pirate Cake, and everything finally fell into place. Funnily enough, after all my angst, we ended up with pretty traditional games like pass the parcel, pin-the-tale (or in this case the treasure chest), and a treasure hunt (with actual pirate treasure - well, OK, cardboard pirate chests full of chocolate coins). The cake turned out pretty good, I reckon.
I've certainly come a long way since Miss Missy's third birthday, when she requested a Peppa Pig cake. I looked in horror at the amazing creations on the interwebs, and decided that I could probably pull off a picture of Peppa piped atop the cake. The midnight drama that year was the red icing for Peppa's dress. I added more and more red colouring, the icing turned pinker and pinker, stubbornly refusing to turn red! Then I had an a-ha moment, added some chocolate icing, and came up with perfect Peppa red.
Since then, I've turned more to the library for inspiration, and have created my own versions of cakes from several of the books in the catalogue.
I love Debbie Brown’s books, the instructions are really easy to follow, and I've used quite a few of her designs now. I found the perfect cake for Missy Missy's pony party in Debbie Brown's 50 Easy Party Cakes.
It really was easy! Honest! And it survived the near disaster of having the oven door slammed, which jarred the mane off one of the ponies (and I'd put it in the oven FOR SAFE KEEPING!)
The kids and I drooled over More Cakes for Kids and the Young Lad chose the fire engine cake. It turned out almost too good, because he was desperately upset when we cut it up and ate it!
This year's wonderful discovery was Tamara Jane’s Celebration Cupcakes. I used her royal icing recipe to make Gingerbread Hulks, and her floodwork instructions to create superhero cupcake toppers. I had a lot of fun making them, but when the Young Lad saw the Hulks, he informed me "I can do it betterer than you, Mum!" and proceeded to amaze me with his piping skills. Our top tip from this year's cakery is to use little zip-lock bags for piping the royal icing. That way, the icing stays where it should (inside the bag, not squirting out the back and all over your hands) and the icing stays nice and fresh, even while you wait for things to dry before adding more details. We just snipped the corner of the bags, but I imagine you could put a piping nozzle in it if you wanted to.
OK, I'll admit it - this blog post was mostly an excuse to show off, and redeem myself after sharing the story of my culinary failures. But a little bit of shameless self-promotion is alright now and then, right?
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