Cookie decorating parties are such fun

Our girls are, possibly sickeningly for some, the light of our lives.  Really.  They drive us insane at times, but we really are glad they're about.  Would have been all sorts of fun with Mini-3 too, but sometimes you just need to deal with the hand you're dealt.  

Mini-2 has a birthday coming up soon, and a school friend who wanted to come over for a playdate.  Now this particular girl in Mini-2's class lives on a street with about 4 or 5 other girls in their year group.  And when they found out that L was coming over, well, they all wanted to come!  As you do when you're 6.  So they all came.  And I guessed it would be a madhouse for a couple of hours, so figured I'd call it an early birthday party and try to contain the excitement slightly.

Mini-2 chose the cake she wanted (see details in a separate post) and then chose cookie decorating as the activity.  Remember those edible food markers I bought a year or so ago for her 5th birthday cake?  Well they still worked, so were put to good use by the girls at the party.  As with last year, they all had a blast and were thrilled to take home their arty efforts.  Well done girls!

Big sis went for the stripy cupcake case and sprinkles with the red cherry again - ha ha.

Little sis (and birthday girl) decided to write herself a happy message

 Not everyone managed to complete their designs, but they were all happy with them.

Great work girls!

Zoe's birthday part 2 - cupcake decorating party

Zoe's mum had read my post about the last decorating party I'd done, and kept me in mind for her daughter's upcoming birthday.  I duly arrived at the house, having prepared my naked cupcakes and tons of icing and carrying lots of different sprinkles, nozzles, piping bags and so on.

And a more attractively arty one by a photographer who was at the party.  She took lots of great pics, thankfully.

Here we see the gang,  having coloured their icing as they chose, getting it into the icing bags.

And then get right on with the task of getting the icing onto the cupcakes, and the all important task of choosing which sprinkle to place where on each cupcake.

This lovely lady was really concentrating, and had some great ideas on how to do things - you could tell she'd had some practice.

 Even boys can enjoy the decorating side of things - with blue icing, naturally 

 Here's a collage of the finished products - they all had such fun!

And the girls all proudly displaying their skill, in take-home boxes to show their parents.

Now here's a photo from an angle that I simply couldn't take - it's me, wearing my attractively large white Becca Bakes tee-shirt.

 Thanks so much for inviting me to be a part of your birthday celebrations Zoe!!

 

Christmas-time, but not a Christmas party

S was recommended to try some Becca Bakes goodies by her friend L (woo hoo!!  a customer recommendation), so got in touch to ask for party cupcakes for her daughter.  They were not to be Christmas-sy at all, but rather girly and in the favoured colours of purple and green.  Flavours were the perennial favourites of chocolate and vanilla.  No problem I said, and gave her these beauties - with just a touch of sparkle, to make sure the party went well.  Enjoy!

Cookie decorating, at a birthday party? What fun

Although I was fairly sure that the girls invited to Mini-2's birthday party would be alright if left to their own devices to play, I wanted to have a few activities up my sleeve, just in case they needed distraction or entertainment.  I bought a pin-the-wart-on-the-Gruffalo game, wrapped up a pass-the-parcel game (admittedly in the last hour before the party, not my best  plan) and was ready with prizes for musical bumps and the like.  I wanted to try out the edible marker pens again, so this time made the girls cookies and sugarpaste-covered them in plenty of time, so that it would harden and be a smoother surface on which to draw.

These were the edible ones, not for the kids to decorate.  You'll see I used the Muppet and Sesame Street rice paper toppers I had previously bought to match the napkins (see post about the petal cake for clarification).  Well, it'd be a shame to waste them...

A plate-ful of naked hearts and cupcakes, all ready to be decorated.  And below, on the art mat with the pens, ready for the crafty part of the party.

Why is it that children feel the need to name everything?  I suppose it's because it's one of the first words they are keen to master when it comes to learning to write...

 This child is a little bit older, so is trying to do an actual picture on her cupcake

Mini-1 wanted to make her cupcake look like an actual cupcake.  She's coloured the 'case' pink and is putting coloured line sprinkles on the top.  If you squint, you can just see a red cherry on top.

 All the cookies from all the girls - ready to pop in their party bags to take home to show their families.

Party entertainers are we

I had been approached before about offering cupcake decorating parties, but not really given it enough thought and it never worked out.  This time however, I gave it proper attention, worked out exactly what I would need to do to prepare and bring with me, and it was Game On!

The girls had no idea I was coming, so they were pleasantly surprised to disover what the party entertainment was.  They were 10 years old, or almost 10, so a good age to take in what I wanted to show them. 
I brought baked vanilla cupcakes for each child, plus spares on which to demostrate.  Plus a big bowl of fresh white vanilla buttercream, ready to be coloured.  I chose 5 colours for the icing and about a dozen different sprinkles of all sorts of shapes and colours, plus a small tub or two of non-toxic foodsafe glitter, just for fun.  Any more and I felt the girls would not be able to choose...

 The birthday girl trying out her first colour

 And her second.  Nicely done T!

A friend mastering the technique required to swirl her icing.

 The gang showing off their colourful handiwork - they did so well and we all enjoyed ourselves and had a lot of fun, parents included!!

 Boxed and ready to take home to show their families - well done girls and thank you so much for sharing your 10th birthday with me :)

Hello Kitty comes to party at Becca Towers

Our kids have winter birthdays (well, if you live in the Northern Hemisphere they're in winter), so never really get to play outside during their parties.  It never seems to matter, but I'm aware of the lack of opportunity.  So I fancied giving the girls a party for going back to school.  It's Mini-2's first year of school, and today is the end of her first week of full days at school (they went only half-days for the first few weeks, to ease them in) - what more excuse does one need?

I also happened upon a really, really cute boxed party set of Hello Kitty.  The box had 8 matching paper plates, cups, napkins, party hats, and horns.  So fun, right?  And 3 months plus was a long time to wait to use it.

So I decided to challenge myself a little bit and try out a two-tier cake again (my birthday was the last, and first, one) and to match it to the napkin colours.  A local cakey friend, L, had Hello Kitty cutters that I borrowed (and have since bought my own) and I used them to make the little faces for the sides of the cake, and to make the cookies.  But first the cake...

I tried to match the colours of sugarpaste, and was quite pleased.  I made the pink myself, but bought some green sugarpaste and added in white until I was closer to the shade required.  The top of the cake looked quite bare, and wasn't perfectly flat and tidy.  So I remembered learning this trick for making ribbon when I was at cake school, and thought it would look perfect on top of the cake.  The girls loved it!

The top tier is chocolate cake coated and filled with chocolate ganache - another challenge.  The Aussie's seem to use ganache almost exclusively, in place of buttercream, but I found it quite difficult to manoeuvre and get smooth.  So if you look too closely, you'll see the bumps in the green cake.  The lower tier was vanilla cake with buttercream, at which I have more practice - so looks a bit smoother.

Now, the cookies.  Here they are naked, ready to be baked.

 And deliciously golden, out of the oven.

 And finally, dressed in their matching green and pink outfits :)

Here is the table all laid and ready for the party guests (we have 6 chairs, so the girls were able to choose 2 friends each), set with the matching paper crockery at each place and the co-ordinating snacks (red grapes an fresh green peas)

 And finally a close up of the cake and cookies in situ - welcome to school girls!!!

(an update - the girls never played outside during this party either!! ha ha. they were having too much fun messing about indoors)