Cake Pop Wedding Cake

This is the result of the conversation I had with a good friend nearly 2 years ago. It was at Charlie's christening when she tried her first ever cake pop and it blew her mind and she said 'promise me, if I ever get married, please can you make these as my wedding cake?' And I foolishly agreed! Little did I know there was no such precedent on the internet to copy! So I had to wing it and I nearly pooped my pants with the stress of it!

Not only was it the wedding cake it was also the dessert!

So I made 277 chocolate cake pop truffles (no sticks!) coated in either white, milk or dark chocolate. I used Rachel Allen's chocolate cake recipe from her Bake book for the base recipe.

I made them in batches - not all at once! And froze them.

They defrosted on the drive to the venue ready for assembly.

Then I was winging it completely! I made a cone out of silver thin card, it had a slight sheen to it. I put it on top of a cone shaped vase to give it additional support in case it fell in under the weight of itself. This wasn't necessary.

Then I assembled by sticking them on the cone with the correct coloured melted chocolate, starting at the base and working up. As it dried they were stuck fast. I filled in the gaps with some of the bridal flowers.

And gave it a feature at the top to finish it off!

It didn't use 277! It probably took about 120 so I could have gone bigger but I wasn't sure and didn't want to risk it. Fortunately it worked well like that anyway. There was enough for everyone to have pudding without disturbing the cake. Late in the night, after the partying, the odd pop started to be yanked off the 'cake' as people walked past!

If I did it again, I think I would make different size pops so that I could work down to the smaller ones near the top.

Lego party food & games & party bags

We had a little birthday tea for Max's birthday and it had a lego theme.

There is tonnes of ideas on the net. This is just the bits I pulled together for his little party tea.

1.Legohead marshmallow cakepops

Dip marshmallows in yellow food paste coloured, melted, white chocolate. And topped with a yellow smartie or skittle. Face painted on with black icing.

Lego head tophat/cakepops

2. Lego brick biscuits. 

Nigella's sugar biscuits covered in coloured water icing and 6 smarties or skittles would work too (with brighter colour matching)

Lego brick biscuits

3. Lego brick sandwiches

This idea went down a storm and I have made them several times since. By request for lunch boxes and for our early doors car journey to legoland! The photo isn't great but hopefully you get the idea. Make a simple sandwich, cut off the crusts and cut in half horizontally. Using a small  round cutter, cut multiple rounds from another piece of bread and stick on 6 to the sandwich using philly or spread. Easy and highly desirable by small and big boys alike!

4. Lego brick juice boxes/cartons.

I found a free printable on one of my internet trawls (sorry I can't find it to post it here) and printed it on coloured paper and wrapped around the juice boxes. Fab idea!

Non lego related food products were served in lego/duplo (sterilised) box/containers. That was a job I could delegate to the boys and kept their hands out of the way for a while!

Duplo made food serving vessel

Other decoration ideas I used;

1. Birthday message written in lego.

2. I found and downloaded a free lego font and  used it to make this backdrop sign.

3. The lego head made of cardboard. which was used in one of the games as well as for decoration.

4 And lots of print outs of head found on the internet.

Games we played

1. Pin the head on the lego man!

2. Throw the lego bean bag in the lego head.

Party bags included
1. Lego bean bags
2. Lego name plates
3. Lego erasers
4. Lego cake
5. Lego pop
6. Homemade lego colouring book

Monster birthday cake

Here is the monster birthday cake I made for Max's Monster Birthday party. It was inspired thanks to this pin.

It was just a regular chocolate sponge, plus some star nozzle piped orange flavour (used squash concentrate) butter icing. The cake pops were made with a chocolate and marmalade cake I baked, mushed with chocolate fudge icing (shop bought), dipped in melted white chocolate with fondant icing eye lids, iris and pupils. The mouth is fondant icing also.

Superhero party

Welcome to the Superhero Training Camp Party for Ollie's 6th birthday!

It's over - hooray! Weeks of work but it was all totally worth it when the last person left and Ollie ran into the middle of the hall and yelled, arms up - 'that was the most amazing party ever!'

The concept

It was a superhero training camp. At the start the kids were given a training record, with a checklist of all the superhero skills we were going to work on (in the form of the games to come). Information on the games we did will follow in this blog.

Decorations

I wrote Ollie is 6 using comic book pages.

I added Happy birthday Ollie speech bubbles to some cheap and cheerful plastic bunting. I downloaded Comic Book Commando, Badaboom and Casper Comic free fonts from a free font website to use for all the stationery.

I printed off pictures of all the superheroes I could think of, added a speech bubble and decorated the hall with them. They also became part of the quiz as the last question was to name as many as possible.

I cut up and painted a cardboard box to make some buildings. I used a sponge and got it painted and decorated in minutes. I used these against the stage with an old duvet cover to make a little photobooth for flying photos.

The food

The party was 2.30-4.30pm so we kept the food minimal as it wasn't technically a meal time and we were very busy with the training! We had cake, superhero cake pops, rainbow fruit kebabs and crisps.

Rainbow fruit kebabs

The cake was a vanilla sponge. Each layer was coloured red, blue, black and yellow with white buttercream icing to sandwich them and fondant icing on the outside. Fondant icing stars on sticks and a 6 made from silver foil wrapped in fondant icing.

Superhero cake

Superhero cake after cutting

The costumes

My husband and I made capes out of an old blue sheet. I was Mrs Dynomite (as seen in the you tube invite) and he was Captain Ka-boom. We painted on face masks to get into character. My dad and his wife came to help, they had outfits too - Superman and Supermac(donald)

The games/superhero training skills

Identity

First off we had to get ourselves a superhero identities. I got the children to pull a name out of hats. The first part from one hat, the second from the other.

Here is a list of the words we used;

Invincible

Incredible

Green

Super

Daring

Silver

Courageous

Electro

Galaxy

Shadow

Captain

Awesome

Steel

Star

Thunder

 Samurai

Defender

Phantom

Surfer

Avenger

Falcon

Cobra

Blizzard

Hands

Blast

Wonder

Tornado

Ninja

Star

Flash

Ollie was Phantom Thunder, Max was The Invincible Flash!

They then wrote their name on the checklist, and thought of some appropriate super powers for their name. 

We then made capes (using old t-shirts that I had pre-cut into the right shape - see previous post on superhero cape making) and the first letter of each of their name parts (which I had also pre-cut from felt/t-shirt material). They stuck them on using pritt stick, which held well enough.

Flying

The flying exercise was simply musical corners. I put a poster up in each corner of the hall, Batcave, Metropolis, Planet Krypton, Gotham City. They flew around in their capes and when the music stopped had to choose a corner to fly to. I called out a corner (without peeking) and those people were out.

Transforming

This was about speed of changing! It was also a team game so we could discuss how being a superhero sometimes means working together.

Two rows. One small suit jacket (purchased from charity shop for £1), one pair of glasses and one hat per team. They had to put all those item on and then take them off and pass to the next person in the row. The first row where they had all changed, won.

Knowledge

A quiz that I wrote.

X-ray vision

I painted some boxes to look like bricks. I put things inside and told them they had to tell me what was behind the brick wall. They could feel or smell. 

5 boxes;

Marmite, onions, peeled cherry tomatoes, lego and crushed up crisps.

Defeating villains

This game was like musical chairs. I printed off enough villains for 1 per child. I laminated these (not really necessary but I got a laminater for Xmas and wanted to use it!) and lay them on the floor in a circle. They walked around in a circle until the music stopped when they had to find one to stand on and I then said 'Batman defeats.........The Joker' etc whoever was standing on it was out until only one was left.

Kryptonite Avoidance

This game was basically pass the parcel without all the wrapping up layers. I made some kryptonite by scrumpling some aluminium foil and covering it with green tissue paper mache. If they were left holding the kryptonite when the music stopped they were out.

Power up

This was basically having a break to eat some crisps, cake pops and fruit kebabs!

Strength

This was bashing a homemade pinata of a villain. I don't think I have a photo as he was quite awful! But luckily he didn't have to look good to be a villain.

The end

We wrapped up at the end by singing happy birthday and cutting the cake. While the cake was being cut and put into party bags we presented the certificate saying they had passed their training and were now entry level superheroes!

Everyone seemed to have a good time and I am very grateful to the mum's who stayed and helped out with tea making and clearing and generally managing them when they all got a little hyper!

Thank you too to my Dad, his wife and my husband without whom the day would not have gone as well. 

Christmas pudding cake pops

Christmas cake pops

Made using a bought chocolate cake crumbed with some homemade butter icing. Rolled, covered in melted chocolate, then some white, vanilla candy melts. Then I bought some holly and berry sprinkles from an online cake decorating suppliers.

Reindeer cake pops

I made some reindeer cake pops to go with the Xmas puds. This time with milk chocolate, red dragees, choc chips and pretzel sticks. The cake itself was a shop bought coconut cake and butter icing. Hoping they will be kind of like a bounty bar.

Chestnut Cake Pops

Today's school holiday activity was making these chestnut/conker inspired cake pops. I was inspired by some truffles I saw in this book but decided to make them as cake pops when I saw that a walnut cake was on sale in Sainsburys.
This is how we made them;
Smush a walnut cake like this into crumbs, then mix in a large tablespoon of nutella (warmed in the microwave for 10secs), plus 2 tablespoons of some chestnut paste (I had some in the cupboard that I had never known how to use!), and a teaspoon of peanut butter.
Refrigerate this mix for a while, then roll into balls. I made 20 about the size of large marbles.
Then I put a few drops of blue food colouring into some ready made golden marzipan to make it green. Use the marzipan to make little blankets to wrap around the chestnut cake balls.
Then put on a stick and cover the outer with melted chocolate which you agitate with the back of a teaspoon to give a spiky look as it dries.

Cake Pops for Charlie Bear's Christening

You might consider this a bit of a spoiler so if you don't want to see them before the Christening then don't scroll down to the photos.
Today I made the cake pops for Charlie's christening. In case you aren't familiar cake pops are little cake lollypops, created by crumbing up a homemade cake with lots of cream cheese and buttercream icing, forming it into balls and dipping into into melted chocolate or candy melts and decorating to be whatever you like.
I have made bears as that is what we call Charlie all the time, he is our Charlie Bear.