Super Hero Party: The finished result!

It's always nice when a plan comes together. Weeks of research on pinterest, brainstorming, cutting, gluing and baking finally came together. This time for my son's 4th Birthday Party. Amazingly this is the first children's party where I didn't feel rushed at the end, no sobbing into the regal icing, I even had time to go back and try ideas shelved as 'if I get time I might try that' - all helped by a few late nighters of course.

When we first started party planning my son quite liked Spiderman (you may remember the mask post back in August) then he quickly discovered other animated series the Super Hero Squad Show, X-men and the Avengers and so the party evolved into a more general 'Super Heros' party. I tried to represent all of his favourite characters in the food and party items: Hulk Jellies, Iron-man Biscuits, Captain America Cupcakes, Wolverine Cake, Thor's Cheese Hammers & Spiderman Invites ... we even had a telephone booth to change in....

Minnie Mouse Party

So sorry, this post appears to be 6 months late... As my son's birthday is fast approaching it occurred to me that on the bottom of the 'to be blogged' pile was my daughter's Minnie Mouse Party from back in June!

 

As it was the Jubilee we ended up having two parties in one weekend, and I have to admit that despite lots of early planning this one felt a little rushed, but it came together in the end and little lady had a great day. Click read more to see the full details...

Burger Cupcakes [Suitable for Vegetarians]

I saw this concept on an old blog entry from Heather Taylor from "I do ... Inspiration" and fittingly I was Inspired. The photo that I had innocently found while researching superhero cupcakes on google images was that of Burger Shaped cupcakes! Some might say this idea is a bit kitch, naff or cheesy (burger pun) but I thought it was worth trying at least the once.

 

It's simply made by cutting a plain sponge cupcake in half across the horizontal, and then 'sandwiching' a disc of chocolate cake or brownie in between stuck together with Jam (for the tomato ketchup) and green buttercream (lettuce). I made my 'burgers' with some leftover chocolate cake but would have liked to have made the 'burger' with brownie for a difference in texture. If you have any, sesame seeds would also look the part (scattered over the top during baking).

 

I only made a small batch of these to try out the idea, my willing Guinea Pigs tomorrow are: Jac, Nicola and all the little ones :) Although I have to admit I've also made some traditional butterfly cakes and the kids decorated a few vanilla sponges cupcakes with pink buttercream - so something for every there hopefully.

 

 

*- please note the title of this blog  entry is meant in jest, obviously the suitability for vegetarians depends on the recipe used - but the vast majority of cake recipes will not involve the use of meat, although any recipe using eggs, milk or butter will not be suitable for vegans.

Cake: The Trash Can Pack / Trashies

I volunteered to bake a cake for my Nephew's birthday last week. Apparently he's really into the 'Trash Pack' and Trashies toys -he has the bin and the dump truck. Now, I've only ever seen the TV advert so a little research was needed, but I quickly decided that in the time scale a 'Trash can' cake was the most straight forward with a surprise bright green cake inside.

This is a basic guide to how I made the cake - although I'm sure there are far easier or more professional ways to achieve the same cake. I didn't have a lot of time to plan and shop for this cake, so everything had to be available from my local asda or my own store-cupbaord - with more planning I'd have located some 5" round baking tins and bought more dowels and ready coloured grey and green sugar paste.

Cake:

(using a 12" by 6" rectangular tin)

14oz Self Raising flour

14oz Butter

14oz Caster sugar

7 medium eggs
2 tsp baking powder
2tsp vanilla essence
Gel food colouring: green

Icing:
1 tub frosting/buttercream
1 kg ready to roll white icing
Gel food colouring: green, black and yellow
Gold luster

Firstly I made a large rectangular cake using the recipe above (if you have small enough round tins use these instead and you will have less wastage), which I have adapted from my basic sponge measurements. After preheating my oven to 170°C I cream the sugar and butter, then adding the wet and dry ingredients alternately. I added the green gel at the end so I could judge the brightness of the green. I used asda natural colouring gel, most gels will work well, but avoid the liquid colouring. To add the gel I coated the bottom part of a cocktail stick in the gel and swirled it around in the cake mixture to release the colour before turning the mixer back on, I binned the leftover stick and repeated the process 3-4 times.

Baking times will vary depending on the size of tin, but for mine it took 30 minutes, although I was expecting between 45-1 hour for a thicker cake.

Once cooled I cut the large cake into 4 individual 5 inch cakes, I levelled the tops and stacked them with frosting between each layer and using a dowel rob for stability ... again, ideally I'd have used 4 evenly spaced dowels and cut them to size but time was an issue and as it had to be transported I left the dowel in (which I tried to hide a bit with the 'lid' handle). The cake did 'slouch' a little by the end as a result of the lack of even support, but I like to think it added to the 'old trash can' look of the cake.

Once assembled, I crumb coated the whole cake in frosting (store bought betty spoon as a time saver) and refrigerated for half an hour.

Now the interesting part, the icing. Firstly I died most of my 1kg of white ready roll icing grey using black food colouring gel - you can buy ready coloured icing from sugarcraft and specialist shops if you have more notice. Then I rolled out a large rectangle of icing and cut it to straighten the edges and measured to the height of cake, I placed the cake onto the rectangle and rolled the cake up in it, cutting at the overlap and using a sugar craft tool to bleng the join a little.

Placing the cake upright I then rolled out a circle to cover the top of the cake. And used a ball shaped sugar craft tool to make grooves around the cake to look like the indentations on the outside of the 'trash can'. Next I died most the remaining white icing green to match the inside of the cake and cut 'oozy dribbles' to go around the cake, I hid the tops of these with a long flat 1 inch piece of grey icing - which was supposed to look like part of the lid.

To one side I used more green icing to cut the letters 'j-a-c-k' and the number 5 out, and laid a 1 inch strip of grey icing over a stack of two flat wooden spatulars to dry out and give it a 'handel' shape. the remaining tiny bit of white icing was then died yellow, formed into 'screw' shapes and painted with gold luster.

The cake went down very well, the kids all liked the shape and theme of the cake while the adults where impressed with the favour of the sponge (despite the vivid green colour, lol).

Jubilee Birthday Party!

Little lady turned 2 at the start of the month and despite having originally planned a Minnie Mouse Party I couldn't resist changing the 'family' leg of her celebrations into a Jubilee/Britannia party, fitting for the patriotic climate of the weekend.

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"So, the Minnie Mouse Party idea went out of the window?" I hear you ask. No, of course not. We ended up hold the jubilee party on the Saturday, having visitors over Sunday, Zoo on Monday and then a Minnie Mouse Party for her friends on Wednesday.

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OK, so I admit, with a month to the wedding, twelve cards to do and two kids to run after, I probably didn't need to make more work for myself - but sleep is for the weak ... idle hands ... and all that!

An easy idea we've used for a few kids parties are these simple iced sugar cookies. Basically: simple round biscuits, topped with white sugar paste, and finished off with sugar paper 'cake' toppers. You can buy sheets of them in all sorts of themes very cheaply from places like eBay or you can print your own using edible inks.

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I decided attempt a seemly fitting 'Crown' cake for the occasion. I was inspired by an article from Daily Mail on line. But adapted it to fit our red, white & blue theme, and added more children's party friendly confectionery decorations.

Considering the reduced time frame I don't think it came out too badly. Lots of compliments on the taste too (just a basic 5 egg recipe, filled with buttercream and jam).

As well as the cookies and cake, I made red-velvet cupcakes (topped with candy striped red/white/blue icing and sugar paste cameos), sausage rolls, and my Mum made scones. To finish the look we hung store-bought bunting all over the ceiling and along the sides, union jack paper plate, napkins, even red white and blue straws.

Considering the late notice of the theme change I don't think we did too bad. Given more time and supplies I would have liked to have made paper pomanders, made our own bunting, made solider cookies (or at least got them into the theme somewhere).

Character cakes revisited

I've been excitedly trying to work out which kind of cake to make for my daughter's 2nd Birthday. I  have to admit I do love a good character cake. I remember many happy hours spent with my Mum's 'Children's Party Cake Book' (by Cathy Mackinlay, circa 1987), just looking at the photos :D ... Oh and one instance where, without access to sugar paste, I attempted to ice the cake on p55 with peanut butter - which didn't go down well with my parents, who had no idea I'd even made a cake in the first place.

Anyway, it's all got me a bit nostalgic, finger painting, baking gingerbread men and themed birthday cakes were all desirable draws of Motherhood as far as I was concerned when I was a kid - so you can imagine how excited I was when my son's first birthday came along...

Iggle Piggle from 'In the Night Garden' was the hero of the moment during JJ's first year of life, so who else could I base a cake on. I'd planned out the shape, and even made a template to cut each limb out of a 9 by 9 cake tin. This was a learning curve about sugarpaste, buying plain white then colouring it with food dye was a slow and unrewarding process, but I learnt a lot (even if it was simply: do not use food colouring).

By JJ's second birthday, everything had to be Pixar Cars related (and still is a year and a half later), he even got a red race car shaped bed. I wish I'd known then how much of an obsession cars where going to be for him and I'd have invested in a car shaped tin, instead for this cake I layered two large square cakes and then carved the cake out of them (there was so much cut-off Mr S even made an additional 'mater' cake and iced it with butter cream). This time I bought pre-coloured red icing :)

Third Birthday, Josh was still equally cars obsessed and personally requested a 'Chick Hicks' cake (another Pixar/Disney cars character), this is probably my best cake to date, having perfected my 'car shaped' cake the year before.

My daughter's first birthday I set myself a bit of a challenge with this 'Waybuloo' De-Lei cake, when the big day came around I was feeling so under the weather with flu but managed to cobble together this cake for her. Can't wait for this year, its a Minnie Mouse theme and there are so many great ideas out there.