Angry Bird Party

For my son's 6th birthday we had an Angry Bird party. I had seen some of my friends' posts about Angry Bird parties they did, and thought it would be pretty simple. As with the alien party, I tried to get my boys as involved as much as possible. They sampled sandwiches, helped make the Bomb bird,  and made another poster with drawings of angry birds, and angry bird levels.

A few weeks before the party, I asked for boxes from my local grocery store. We used them to build angry bird towers, complete with bad piggies (I hadn't planned very well how to attach them, especially with the wind, so we only had one). After building the towers, the boys took turns throwing balls at them to knock the tower down.

 

 They especially enjoyed being the angry birds, and knocking the box towers down with their bodies.

 For the cake, I made chocolate cupcakes, and turned them into angry birds using different colours of fondant icing (and dried apricots for some of the mouths). The sling-shot is made out of carrot cake, with homemade apple fruit leather for the sling. I baked the carrot cake in a 9-in x 13-in tin lined with baking paper. After removing the cake from the tin, I cut a slingshot shape from it. I had a lot of fun making this cake, and was quite pleased with how it turned out. I let each boy choose an angry bird to take home, and they loved that.

 

For the rest of the food, I made Matilda sandwiches. I used a round biscuit cutter that fit inside the bread. The filling was either ham or cheese, but you could use any sandwich filling really. I cut triangles out of orange cheese for the beaks. For some of the eyes, I used sliced black olives, and some had halved red grapes. I used julienned dates for the feathers. Although it worked pretty well, the dates didn't go down very well with the party guests. Most of them didn't know what they were. If I make these again, I would either just use scraps of the white bread, or make strips with brown bread for more contrast.

 Another game we played was pin the fuse on Bomb. My boys helped design the bird and the fuses.

We also had a treasure/egg hunt. Each clue was on a piece of paper that formed part of a puzzle. on the other side of the  puzzle was a picture of the locker we hid the treasure box in. I placed the party bags and some kinder eggs in the treasure box. As usual, the treasure hunt was one of the more popular activities.

Alien Party

Several months ago, I had an alien birthday party for my son, and I am finally getting around to posting about it. I don't have a fancy camera, and I am not the most artistic person around, but I found/had some fun ideas I think someone out there might want to use someday.

As my boys get older, I try to involve them as much as possible in the planning of their birthday parties. I don't really care about everything looking perfect. I'd much rather have things that my boys helped to create. My son really likes aliens, and especially loves drawing his own alien creations. So when it came to deciding what his theme would be, it was a no-brainer. We looked through cake decorating books together and found a design he liked. To decorate, my boys drew aliens and planets on a banner of paper, and then we taped black alien eyes to balloons.

For the invitations, I cut out aliens my son had drawn and pasted them to some shiny card with the party information: 4...3..2..1.. Blastoff to x's alien party.

For the food we found a tutorial on how to make alien cupcakes, and then my son helped me make and decorate them.  I also made some green smoothies using this idea for a Toy Story alien milkshake.

I got the idea for the birthday cake from Gorgeous and Gruesome Cakes for Children. I changed the swamp monster into an alien eating an astronaut. The actual cake didn't turn out so well, it was quite dense, but I really liked how it looked.

For the games we did "pin the eye on the alien." My son drew the shape for the alien's body.

The best game of the day was our "Aliens in Underpants" treasure hunt.  When the children first arrived, we had each one decorate his own paper underpants. When they were finished, we hung them on the line. Then when they were busy building spaceships out of junk, I took the underpants, and hid them around the house next to a party bag with another original alien pasted to the front.  When we were ready for the treasure hunt, we announced that the pants had been stolen by aliens, and each child had to find his own underpants.  They loved this game!

Pirates and Pizza

My eldest wanted a pirate theme for his 5th birthday party. It being the summer holidays with three small children at home, things have been really hectic. So, I wanted to keep things simple. I made an ice cream pie in a 9x13 pan. Then I placed a skull and cross-bones stencil my husband to kindly made for me, on top of the ice cream, that had been sitting out for a few minutes to soften a bit.  Then, carefully, I sprinkled Oreo cookie crumbs on top. It's as simple as that, and you have a Jolly Roger flag cake.

My son also wanted pizza for his birthday. I thought it would be fun for the children to make their own pizzas, so I rolled out individual pizza bases the night before.placed the pizza bases on floured greaseproof paper (wax paper would work well too), layered the bases on a baking tray, and froze them. After making the first six pizzas today, I discovered that this works well, only if you remove the pizza bases from the paper while still frozen, and place them on a prepared pan (greased or sprinkled with cornmeal). Then you can put the sauce and toppings on. The first ones, I left on the paper to dress, and when they were finished, they had thawed and stuck to the paper, then stuck even worse in the oven. (oops, I should have known better).

Winger's Dinner

My hubby's birthday was last week, and I surprised him with a Winger's Bar & Grill inspired menu. He'd been asking for wings for a while, and since that's one of his favourite places to eat in Utah, I wanted to make it as authentic as possible. I searched the web for some of the recipes, and just made up the rest. The recipes below are the ones I made, and are really just estimates. Here is the menu:

Chicken wings, this was a great recipe. The wings turned out really crispy just like they had been fried.

Winger's Original Amazing Sauce. I decided on this recipe as opposed to the Franks hot sauce recipes, since I didn't want it to be too hot for the boys.

Blue Cheese dipping sauce: 1/4 cup sour cream, 1/4 cup yogurt, Tbs chives, 1/4 cup crumble stilton cheese, salt and pepper to taste.

Potato Skins: Take small bakes potatoes, cut in half lengthways and scoop out the flesh, leaving just a little left in the skin. Top with crumbled bacon and grated cheese (you could spread pizza sauce on first if desired). Bake at a high temperature (about 400 F) until cheese is melted. Serve with sour cream and chives if desired.

Raspberry Lemonade. This was a bit hit.

Asphalt Pie: (It's impossible to get a good quality mint ice-cream in the UK, so I decided to make my own. I didn't measure the ingredients out. Maybe someday, I'll try it again, and measure the ingredients to make a real recipe. It was REALLY good).

Oreo crust: oreo crumbs, and enough melted butter to get oreo crumbs to just start to stick together. Press into a pie dish or round cake tin. Bake in oven, 350F for about 15 minutes.

Mint chocolate chip ice-cream: Mix 1/2 bar of grated mint flavoured chocolate (Lindt intense mint), with 1/2 can of sweetened condensed milk, and about 1/4 cup milk.

Whip one container of heavy cream with about 1/4 cup milk until soft peaks form. Mix a small amount of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture until smooth, then gently fold the rest of the cream in until well combined. Pour over the cooled Oreo crust, cover and freeze until solid (a few hours at least).

Transformer Cake

For my son's 4th birthday this year, we had a Transformer party. Most of the party food was just normal stuff (no red and purple coloured foods for me thank you). Of course, I always try to have some healthy food with all the junk food. I served vegetable sticks and tortilla chips with hummus dip, fruit slices, and cheese sandwiches. For the adventurous eaters, I made Bahn Mi with teriyaki chicken. For anyone who's wondering, the Bahn mi is our favourite baguette sandwich.

We also had cake and ice-cream. For the cake I made a two layer round zucchini/courgette cake, with a cream cheese frosting. Before adding the icing sugar, I separated two small amounts of the frosting mix from the main, and added blue or red food colouring to each.

I copied and enlarge this picture of the Autobot logo, and printed it up, and glued it to the back of a cereal box. Then, using an exacto knife, I cut out the sections of the picture to form a negative image stencil. (I had to leave a couple of strips to connect the middle triangle).

After layering the cakes, with cream cheese frosting, I spread a thin layer of white frosting on the top. Then I placed the stencil on top, pressing it down to ensure total contact.

Then using a palette knife, I spread the blue and red (OK, so it's pink) frosting on top of the stencil as shown below.
After carefully peeling the stencil off the cake, I ended up with this.
To finish it off, I filled in the gaps and frosted the rest of the cake with the white frosting. You could use a straight frost tip and a piping bag. Since I had neither of those on hand, I used medicine syringe dispensers. They were a bit of a pain to keep refilling, but the size of the tip was perfect for filling in the small gaps. After filling in the gaps and outlining the logo with the syringe tip, I used a palette knife to frost the rest of the cake.

Here is the end result. I was pretty excited that it turned out so well.

The ice-cream was also homemade (unfortunately I didn't get a picture if that), but it was pretty good. I found this recipe for ice-cream that doesn't require a machine, and I just had to try it out. I made strawberry ice-cream and cookies and cream ice-cream. Since I didn't have quite enough Oreo cookies, I even made the chocolate cookies from scratch.

I tweaked the recipe according to the ingredients I can get in the UK, but was basically the same.

Home-made Ice Cream without a machine

1 container single cream (284 ml)

1 container double cream (284 ml)

1/2 to 1/2 cup (8 0z) milk (optional)

1 can sweetened condensed milk

flavours/topping/mix-ins of choice

Whip the creams and milk until stiff peaks form (it's best to use an electric whisk or mixer if you have one). In a separate bowl add the toppings to the sweetened condensed milk. If you want two flavours, divide the condensed milk into two bowls first. Fold the whipped cream into the condensed milk mixture, until combined well. Place mixture into a freezer safe airtight container and freeze6 hours or until firm. If you are using an ingredient that is rather heavy (like my diced strawberries), they tend to sink to the bottom. It's a good idea to mix the ice-cream after a couple of hours, when it is more solid, but still mixable.

Chocolate (Oreo) Cookies

I can't remember exactly where on-line I got this recipe, and I didn't include the frosting, just the biscuit.

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup + 2 Tablespoons butter, at room temp

1 large egg

Mix the dry ingredients together, then beat in the butter and egg.

Place the dough by rounded teaspoons onto a baking tin lined with parchment paper, and flatten slightly.

Bake for 9 minutes at 375 degrees F (190 Celsius).

If using in the ice-cream, place required amount of cookies into a bowl, and crush with the end of a rolling pin.

My Little Chef

My younger boy loves to help me in the kitchen, so I thought it would be fun to make a cake showing his love for cooking. I did give him the option of a Mickey Mouse cake or a rolling pin cake. Whenever I asked him, he always told me "roll pin." My first idea was to try to colour some fondant icing brown and cover the whole cake with it, but I couldn't get it the right colour (it turned out kind of a sickly greenish/gray/beige colour). I realized that the cake itself already looked enough like a wooden rolling pin. To finish the look, I made some biscuit/cookie spoons, dipped in chocolate.

For the cake, I made a Strawberry and Mascarpone Swiss Roll. I followed the recipe exactly, using orange juice in the strawberry mixtures. The sponge turned out really well, the strawberries were delicious, but I felt the Mascarpone cheese was a bit stodgy, and there was too much. Next time I will either use a thinner layer, or even replace it with whipped cream. To make the handles for the rolling pin, I just stuck two dates each onto two toothpicks/cocktail sticks, and stuck them into the sponge cake. Couldn't get any simpler.

For the biscuits, I used a simple biscuit recipe, similar to shortbread. You could also use your favourite sugar cookie recipe, just anything that you can roll out and shape. For each spoon, I used two balls of dough, one larger than the other. The larger ball is flattened in the palm of my hand to form a spoon shape, and the smaller ball is rolled out like a snake for the handle.
I then wet the end of the handle and spoon, place the handle on the end of the spoon, fold the sides over, and pinch together. Then turn the spoon over to finish shaping the spoon. You want the center to be pretty thin with the edges thicker to get the indentation look of the spoon, as they do rise when cooking.
Once the cookies have baked and cooled, you can dip the ends in melted chocolate.

Here's the recipe for the cake, by Lorraine Pascal on Baking Made Easy, BBC:

Ingredients

For the strawberry filling

• 250g/9oz strawberries, hulled and sliced, plus extra to decorate

• 2 tbsp granulated sugar

• splash Marsala or orange juice

For the sponge

• 3 free-range eggs

• 80g/3oz caster sugar, plus extra for finishing

• ½ vanilla pod or 2 drops vanilla extract

• 1 tbsp warm water

• 80g/3oz plain flour

• pinch salt

For the mascarpone cream

• 250g/9oz mascarpone

• 2 tbsp icing sugar

• ½ vanilla pod or 2 drops vanilla extract

Preparation method

1. For the strawberry filling, put a third of the strawberries in a blender or food processor with the granulated sugar and blend well. Transfer the strawberries to a bowl and add the Marsala or orange juice. Stir in the remaining strawberries and chill in the fridge. (The flavour gets better the longer you leave it, so do this a few hours ahead if you can, though if you are ready to go now then a minimum of 30 minutes is fine.)

2. Meanwhile, for the sponge, preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Grease and line a 23 x 33cm/9in x 13in Swiss roll tin or small roasting tin with greaseproof paper.

3. Beat the eggs, sugar and vanilla in large bowl with an electric whisk until the mixture is very pale yellow, foamy and mousse-like. Fold in the warm water with a large metal spoon. (This helps prevent the Swiss roll from cracking when you roll it later.)

4. Sift over the flour and salt and fold in gently with the metal spoon. (Don’t overmix here or you will knock out the air and the Swiss roll will lose its sponginess. The trick is to incorporate all the flour with as few ‘folds’ as possible.)

5. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and level it gently with a palette knife or the back of a large spoon. Bake in the oven for 10–15 minutes, or until the sponge has shrunk a little from the sides of the tin and feels springy to the touch. Remove the sponge from the oven and turn the cake out onto a sheet of baking paper sprinkled with caster sugar. Leave to cool for 10 minutes, then gently peel the lining paper off the sponge and leave to cool completely.

6. Meanwhile, for the mascarpone cream, mix all of the ingredients together in a large bowl.

7. To assemble the cake, trim off any rough edges of the sponge with a sharp serrated knife to get the sides nice and tidy. Spread the mascarpone cream all over the sponge, leaving a small margin so it does not squelch out when it is rolled. Spoon the macerated strawberries over the mascarpone filling and drizzle with a third of the strawberry purée (reserve the rest).

8. With the shortest side facing you, begin to roll up the sponge (away from you) using the baking paper to help. Try to do it as tightly as you can for an impressive-looking finish. Once you have rolled it all up, make sure the join is underneath so it does not come undone. Carefully lift onto a serving plate - you can do this with your hands or use two fish slices or spatulas.

9. Sprinkle with some caster sugar and decorate with extra sliced strawberries. Serve in slices with the remaining strawberry sauce drizzled over.

Have Your Cake. . .

We celebrated my boy's birthday a while back. He loves cars, and we had a car party, so I made a racetrack cake. It's actually really similar to the one I did last year. I tried a chocolate zucchini (courgette) cake, which went over pretty well, but I wasn't pleased with it. I felt it came out a little too dry. I will stick with plain zucchini cake from now on.

The recipe was meant for a 9x13 inch pan. I made two batches, and split them between four 8" round cake pans. I cut the edge off one side of each cake, so they would sit together nicely. I made a frosting of cream (soft) cheese, yogurt, and icing sugar, which turned out quite nice. This was used between the cakes and on the outside. It didn't need to look pretty, because I then covered the cake with the grass and track. The track was laid first using crushed Oreo cookies (without the cream filling). Then I covered the rest of the cake with green coloured coconut. The cars are foil wrapped chocolate.

Since I wouldn't recommend the chocolate zucchini cake recipe I used, I thought I would include a couple of cake recipes that I really do like.

The first is a banana cake recipe I got from Eating Well. When I make the cake, I don't ever make the frosting that goes with it. This is such a moist cake that I don't think it needs a frosting. I did try the frosting recipe for a cake last year, and it didn't quite turn out. So here is the recipe for the cake alone. It calls to put it into 2 9" round cake tins, but I just use one 9x13" pan, and it turns out fine. You may need to adjust the cooking time a bit.

Banana Cake

• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 1 1/2 cups mashed very ripe bananas, (about 3), plus 2 whole bananas, divided
• 1/2 cup nonfat buttermilk, (see Tip)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour, (see Ingredient Note)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

1. To prepare cake: Preheat oven to 375°F. Coat two 9-inch round cake pans with cooking spray and line the bottoms with wax paper or parchment paper.
2. Whisk eggs, 1 cup sugar and oil in a large bowl. Stir in mashed bananas, buttermilk and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Stir whole-wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl. Add to the banana mixture and fold in just until blended. Divide the batter between the pans.
3. Bake the cake until the tops spring back when touched lightly, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and let cool completely.

Transportation Birthday Cake

Last year my son's first birthday cake was rather impromptu. A carrot cake with a cream cheese icing (meant for it to be a frosting, but the more icing sugar I added, the thinner it got; the cream cheese must be different in England than the states). So this year, I wanted to do something special for his second birthday. I felt like being creative, and came with the idea for his cake a couple of months ago. I had a picture of it in my mind, and at one point I even made a blueprint of it, marking what I would use for each component. This is the first cake I've really decorated, and I don't think it's too bad for my first time. My boy loves trains and cars, so I wanted to incorporate both in the cake. I used toy cars and train because that was easier than trying to make them out of something (I did toy with the idea of shaping cars out of marzipan, and making a train out of mini swiss rolls). As it turned out, that was a good idea, because the kids loved playing with the cars after the cake was cut.

Making the cake was quite an adventure. I prepared the toppings a couple of days in advanced. The road is crushed Oreo cookies (without the cream filling), the dirt under the train is crushed rich tea biscuits (similar to animal cookies they have in the States), the grass is dessicated coconut with green food coloring, and the train track is sliced dates.

After searching for recipes for the cake and frosting, I decided on a zucchini cake. I changed it a bit (1 cup granulated sugar and 1 cup brown sugar; one cup oil, and a squeeze of lemon juice). I baked it in a 9 x 13 pan, and it took longer than 25 minutes. The pan I used was warped, and the cake came out uneven (one corner was half the thickness of the rest of the cake!) It looked pretty funny, so I decided to make another cake, and layer them to even it out. That worked out pretty well, but we ended up with a huge cake. Plenty for everyone, and then some!

The other adventure was with the frosting. I am not a huge fan of the regular butter creme frosting inches thick on top of cakes, so I wanted to try something different. I tried finding a recipe for the kind of frosting they use on the Costco cakes (which I couldn't really find). So I decided to try a Bavarian cream style frosting from Eating Well (great magazine). It uses part whipped cream, and part milk/gelatin mix. After I added the whipped cream to the gelatin mix, I decided it probably wouldn't be enough for my enormous cake, so I added some vanilla yogurt too, hoping that it would still set up. Even after being in the fridge all night, it didn't set. So, the morning of the party, I went with plan B, and made a butter cream frosting using butter, icing sugar, and the cream mixture that didn't set. It actually turned out pretty well, and tasted pretty good. I made it thinner than normal frosting, which was fine, since I covered the cake with other toppings.

The cake was a success. I was pretty excited with the final product, and the cake itself tasted really good.

Here's the recipe for the cake with my changes:

Zucchini Cake

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar and 1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
3 cups grated zucchini
1 tsp lemon juice

..DIRECTIONS
1.Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Line a 9 x 13 pan with baking paper.
2.In a medium size bowl combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, white sugar, and salt. Mix well.
3.In another bowl beat eggs, vegetable oil, lemon juice and vanilla together. Pour egg mixture into the flour mixture and mix well. Stir in the shredded zucchini. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4.Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 25 minutes, or until cake springs back when touched, and knife/toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean.