The Birthday Cake
When our son hit his first birthday last year, my wife and I didn't have to do a thing. Grandma orchestrated the party. If you don't have a grandma, I recommend you get one for kid party planning if nothing else. This past weekend marked the second birthday-- but the first we had to throw ourselves. The amount of work nearly killed us.
Oh sure, it could have been easier if I hadn't insisted on throwing a beach picnic for thirty people, cooking everything myself, coordinating activities for sugar-saturated kids and making my first ever themed cake. And check out this piņata my wife made. It's dolled up better than a float in the Rose Parade. By the time we made it through several days of prep work and then a party that lasted all Saturday long, we were dead on our feet.
I'd like to take creative credit for the cake, but for our first effort we stuck very close to an online recipe. (No wisecracks about it being from Woman's Day magazine-- Google knows no gender.) For future reference, frozen pound cake sucks. It had all the flavor of soggy cardboard. Fortunately, toddlers aren't as discriminating as long as the cake is sweet. The blue truck was a huge hit with them, and by extension, their parents.
That's right, everyone loved the truck cake! Loved it. Already I'm thinking about how to make next year even better. Better ingredients, a little more experience. How quickly we forget the hard work when basking in appreciation...
Hey Alan,
How cool! I couldn't agree with you more about frozen poundcake though. I haven't eaten any in a long, long time, but if I had to choose a frozen poundcake, it would have to be the Sensational brand, if it's still around. I used to use those to make strawberry shortcake in a pinch.
Can't wait to see what next year's cake looks like. Please wish your son a happy birthday.
I almost got a sugar attack just looking at the cake, very creative and a darling idea for the kids. Next year what about the monster truck or 18 wheeler version. The pinata was absolutely gorgeous, I miss having my birthdays at the beach too. Happy Birthday to your son and I hope you family has a wonderful year!
Reid - The only brand I could find was Sara Lee. Pound cake isn't that hard to make from scratch. Next time I need one I'll allow time to do that.
Gia - Let's just say that if I listed the ingredients by weight, it wouldn't be flour at the top of the list.
Thank you both for the birthday wishes.
one of the things I regret about not having children is that I don't get to organise any kiddies' parties*. I think I would actually be pretty good at this kind of event (the catering and the party-games, not handling the children, necessarily). Maybe I should rent myself out as a surrogate grandmother???
[*obviously it is a good job I don't have children, because I am clearly more into partying]
Sam, if you can imagine yourself catering and planning kiddie games, I'd bet you'd do well with the children themselves. In their own way, kids like to party most of all!