It's not just the Queen of England that has 2 birthdays....

Jessica's official birthday is on Wednesday which is a pretty tough day to coordinate for a party, so we went for it this past Saturday.  She had her 7th party at Splatter Rocks which is a pottery, painting, tie-dye, mosaic place.  The venue was pretty cool the actual party kind of lacking but that's from the paying adult's perspective - always a harsh critic where dosh in involved!  From the girls' point of view, everyone seemed to enjoy it.  The majority painted a tile which will have holes drilled in and ribbon threaded through for them to hang where ever they want to, or rather wherever their parents say they can.... Other choices were a unicorn, flower, turtle or snake.

Anyway, less about the actual party and onto the cake.  Jessica is a fairly tough customer when it comes to cake.  Most children choose chocolate or vanilla cake - not the Jedi, she requested marble cake with a red velvet & vanilla cake combination (she originally wanted rv & white chocolate but changed her mind).  The cake turned out pretty well.  Any bakers out there will know that the consistency of red velvet cake batter is waaaaaay runnier than regular yellow cake batter, mostly as it has vegetable oil as the fat and not butter!  Still, I did it and although it looked a little pink in places, there were definite pockets of white and red so I'll take that as a success.  The design request was for a lego themed cake, but different to the lego cake I'd done before - okay then....

This was a pretty last minute cake in that I started decorating at 8.20pm on Friday night (cake due next morning).  There's been so much going on recently outside of baking - now I've mentioned this before, but I really do do other things besides baking and making an almighty mess in the kitchen - that I really only had Friday night to get on and do the cake.  Alright, throw in a healthy dose of procrastination and you get the picture...

So, with the girls in bed, I started.  The marshmallow fondant just wouldn't co-operate.  I don't know if it was the temperature outside (it was 84F here on Friday), or if I just didn't nuke the marshmallows for long enough, whatever the reason, I had it on and off the cake several times before wanting to throw it all out of the window.  I even contemplated throwing the whole lot out, cake and all and buying one on Saturday morning from Publix, such was my frustration!  However, I put my hormones back in check and got on with it, just as all self-respecting mums do.  I wasn't particularly happy with the end result of the green marshmallow fondant but well, sometimes you've just got to go with what you've got!  The bricks were fun to do, and yes, yet again, I cut them all out to the sizes of real lego bricks.  (I'm thinking of making a silicon mould for these little things (not exactly what I was calling them on Friday night but that was the sentiment), I mean, really how hard can that be?  I'm almost positive there will be a youtube video, if not several, on how to do it.)  A saving grace was that Jessica didn't want her cake to look like the previous lego cake, which meant way less dots to cut and apply individually which was a time saver.  As it was, I finished the cake at 1.30am and after a very rough tidy and clean of my work area I hit the hay. 

6.45am Saturday morning, my bedroom door flew open and there was Jessica asking if she could a) see her cake and b) was it time to get ready yet?  No was the answer to both. 
6.50am - Jessica again, wanting to go downstairs to see the cake - reply = yes, but don't touch it!  Squeals of delight and awesome rang through the house from my little Southern Belle (oh yes, she's an English born all American Gal!).

We got to the party with everything remembered, except for cutlery to eat the cake with, all that had RSVP'd arrived and a fun time was had by all.  Especially Jessica who was completely overwhelmed (and just a tad obnoxious - only I am allowed to say that!) with all of the wonderful gifts she received - thank you to all who came and helped celebrate Jessica turning 7.



Jessica's 7th Birthday Party cake



Of course, thoughts have now turned to what she's going to have for her 'real' birthday cake for her official birthday! 

What a curious plan.....

For most of Feb (okay the last week of it) and 1st week of March, I summoned all of my sneakiness and subterfuge (pretty easy really for a Gemini) and managed to throw a surprise bridal shower for my friend Marge who is, spookily enough, getting married ♥

Being as how she's marrying an Englishman, I thought it only fitting that the shower be some form of tea party.  I checked this out with one of her colleagues (sneakiness part one) and she suggested a Mad Hatter's Tea Party, and that's exactly what I went with. 

Operation MHTP phase one was to rid all local Goodwill Stores and by local I mean within a 20 mile radius of my house, of all of their mis-matched teacups, saucers, teapots and side plates.  Phase 2 was making mad hatter hats - well the youtube video I watched made it look so easy and it only took her 5 minutes - suffice it to say it took me a little longer :-)  I did have to make 4 of them though.  The initial plan was to make 2 -one for the bride and one for me but once the girls saw them of course they needed, not wanted, one each too, hence 4! 

Phase 3 was the making and baking of food, my favorite bit.  For a traditional tea party finger sandwiches, with the crusts cut off are a must, naturally!  There were a couple of platters of sandwiches, 2 quiches, kahlua & chocolate fudge (YUM), white cupcakes with raspberry coulis and white chocolate buttercream - nuff said, and caramel cupcakes with caramel icing, oh and a chocolate swiss roll with raspberry & whipped cream center. I'm not kidding when I say we had enough food :-)

Here are a few pics, these were taken by Jessica who was chief paparazzi until she was allowed food and then we never saw her again and that's the reason there are no late night photo's of the shower, truly it is....



Head table part 1



Need I say more?

 



 

The bride to be (or BB) with her usual wine glass!









Catch up!

Well, that resolution lasted well :-)  Broken in the 2nd month!  But, that's not to say I've not been baking, I have, I've just not been that great at either taking photo's of the delicious creations or blogging (should that be bragging? don't answer that) about them.

Let's see, what did I make in February? .... I did a last minute Superbowl cake, which was red velvet and cream cheese whipped frosting, and looked like well a football field!  This year it was the Greenbay Packers going head to head with the Pittsburgh Steelers.  The names were at either end of the field with their logos in fondant - but I didn't remember to take photo's of this, d'oh!  So you'll have to take my word for it that it looked pretty good and smelled even better!

Of course it was valentines day too last month, so for the girls classes I made cake pops and jammy dodgers with heart shapes instead of circles cut out - you'll need to take my word for the jammy's though as I didn't get a photo of them (are you seeing a pattern here?).  The cake pops I did though.  These little yummy things were chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream and pops to look like mini cupcakes.  The bottoms were dipped in milk chocolate and the tops in pink and then scattered with mini hearts ♥.

February was then consumed with a variety of girls scout and school (PTA) things... and planning a surprise Mad Hatter themed Bridal Shower for bride to be Marge ♥

Moving along swiftly to March....