I had an absolutely fabulous time celebrating my nephew's first birthday this weekend. After pouring rain all week the park party was relocated to my parents house which meant it was myself and ma doing the catering - making children's party food, is there a greater joy?
We made and played with playdough, bubbles, balloons. We had a fairy castle, and lots of dancing and bands jamming (for the big kids!).
Ma and I had so much fun filling bowls with lollies, finding party pies, sausage rolls, mini hot dogs and buns, quiches, mini pizza slices and so much more!
I had the enormous privilege of being asked to create his first birthday cake, a second to the cake being provided by another aunt. This meant busy me, so most of our other mini-child-sized food was bought but still super yum and super fun!
First birthday cake. Boy. Father is a truck driver. Is there any other option? Train cake!
It began as a disaster. I baked on Thursday night which ended in me going to bed very grumpy with a pile of mushed up cake crumbs in two containers on my table. After overflowing tins caused me to scrub my crappy oven halfway through the baking process, the cakes stuck to each of the baking dishes I used. I had little hope.
On Friday morning (thankfully classes started at 12 that day) I began shaping my train. I was holding my breath, praying that I wouldn't have to do a last minute dash to the store and shape some supermarket cakes instead - bluerrggh! But the heaven's heard: a couple of hours later I had train shaped chocolate cake. I wanted to cover the cake in a thin layer of ganache to stop any crumbs getting into the cream I planned to cover it with. Of course, I ran out of ganache half way through this process. Dad to the rescue - ran to the shop and picked up more cream and chocolate. Came back. Brought 'almond chocolate'. COME ON! 'It's the only one they had. The lumps will come out when you melt it!' he says. Oh daddy.
Anyway, stuck for options I made the almond ganache and lumpy almonds and all it worked alright.
That evening I got decorating! Then realised that my main train piece (sorry, not up with mechanisms of transport) was in the CENTRE of the tray I was using. This was not going well.. but dad came to the rescue (and this time in the right way) and suggested I use the 'lip' of the tray as a hill, and have my carriages going over the hill and onto a second tray!
So got decorating, covering bits with coloured cream and writing number ones. Of course, at this time I didn't have enough room in the fridge for two trays so the decorating of the last carriages came on Saturday morning, just in time.
I couldn't have been happier with my train! The first cake I've liked 100% :) My sister brought a Bananas in Pyjamas cake made by her friend which was also delightful!
The cake was received with continuous compliments and tasted absolutely delicious - moist, rich and super-doop chocolatey!
To accompany the cake a lady from Registration and Licensing (how fitting) told us how to make little chocolate cars - milky bars with smartie wheels, tiny teddies and smartie steering wheels! We used sliced candy-filled licorice instead of smarties for wheels which we found to be even sweeter - tyres! They looked great with my cake and tasted the way children's party food should - full of sugar, super sweet (oh, and bite sized)!
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