1st Birthday Party

We've had some more celebrations over here at Chateau Sweetpea. Sweetpea "E" turned one. I spent a lot of time planning and unfortunately not quite as much time as I would have liked, executing my plans. I was actually still icing the cake as guests started arriving....

All done and dusted now, but a valuable lesson was learned. Plan well, but start executing those plans ASAP!


number one garland made by cutting out number one shapes and pegging them on to a piece of string, using mini pegs. I cut the shapes out whilst watching a movie which made this quite a quick and effective decoration.
Some of the spread. Cupcakes, marshmallows on sticks which had been dipped in chocolate and sprinkles, number one shaped cake (bottom layer chocolate mud cake and top layer caramel mud cake), cake balls dipped in white chocolate, tuna dip and spinach, ricotta and corn cob loaf dip (did not taste at all as I expected, need to find another recipe for this one).

Better picture of the cake. I had intended to cover it with frilly icing, using a piping tip. Although as I started trying to achieve this effect I realised, (i) it would take hours to actually pipe it on; (ii) I would need quite a bit of practice to perfect this effect; (iii) I needed a TON of icing to do this; and finally (iv) there was no way it was going to happen!

The other food that we had included: sausage rolls, mini quiches, tuna dip and salmon dip served on sliced of cucumber and a giant punch. I had attempted to make marshmallows, which I was going to cut into number one shapes for the adult guests to take home. They didn't work out at all and I used the mix to try to make ricebubble marshmallow slice but unfortunately that didn't work too well either.......nevermind.

Upon reflection we had tons of sweet food left over and pretty much all of the savouries had been devoured. In future I must remember that savouries remain the favourites, despite my love of baking and making sweet foods.

At the end of the day the birthday girl and big sis had a great day. Eating sweets, playing with their cousins and friends and being throughly spoilt with kisses and cuddles from everyone.

Now, on to Christmas......

Part II

Above are the chocolate waffle cups filled with creme patissiere and topped with a) sour cherries and b) strawberries and grated chocolate. Next time I would fan the strawberries. Also above is a place of pink lamingtons. If I was to ever make these again I would make the pink slightly darker. I found the lamingtons to be a big pain. They were time consuming and messy and I don't think that lamingtons are that great! They also have a huge fat content (seriously, next time you're ad the supermarket check out the saturated fat content). I'm not a huge heath nut (although it might be about time for that to change), but if i'm going to have something high in fat, it better be yummy.....like those chocolate cups.





I also made profiteroles dipped in white chocolate which you can just see on the back right of the above picture. Although I made a few mistakes they were suprisingly easy to make. Next time I would use the dough hook on my kitchen aid to mix the choux pastry when adding the eggs rather than a wooden spoon, I'm sure this would reduce the chance of blisters induced by use of wooden spoon, ouch. Also, I reduced the temperatures slightly as the recipe I used didn't state if the temperatures were for a fan forced over or a non fan forced oven. My profiteroles were quite soft and didn't have that crunch that you expect. They were however still very yummy. I also had a very tough time filling the shells with creme patissiere as my piping tip kept going back into the bag and the creme patissiere just spilled everywhere. I recall once having a piping tip that kind of screwed on to the top of the piping bag. I will look into this before I make these again. Details of the recipe that I used for the profiteroles can be found at this website, which features some amazing creations, http://raspberricupcakes.blogspot.com/2010/05/cupcake-croquembouche-daring-bakers-may.html










Above we have the bonboniere. I think I can safely say that I will NEVER do these again. I was wrapped with the way that they turned out but they were so incredibly time consuming! I did all of this by hand, every single thing from covering the boxes with white paper to cutting the chocolate into the neatest squares that I could. I also included a little note listing some details of the event and of the saint that is my daughter's namesake. All up I made about 70 of these little gifts, with a little help from my sister.

Finally, for the moment, I also made rosewater lemonade, which I didn't get a chance to take a picture of. I bought glass bottles from our local $2 shop and made up the mix, which was suprisingly easy. I had planned to make it a lovely pink colour, however, when I saw that it was so yellow, I realised that adding pink food colouring would make it go orange. I decided that the natural yellow colour was a much better option. The lemonade was very popular and I will be sure to repeat it for future parties.

My inspiration for these bonboniere came from the following website, which also has loads of other great ideas, as well as free downloads http://www.freeprettythingsforyou.com/

Hope you've enjoyed this post and perhaps gotten some inspiration for a new project or party.

Mary

Latest Projects

I have been very busy over the last few weeks preparing for my smallest daughter's Baptism. I stuck to a pink and white theme and had a great deal of fun (and some stress) preparing decorations and food.

The above picture shows the "dessert table" and some of the decorations. The large pom poms were made using the instructions found on the marthastewart.com website. I made the banner using various pink coloured paper and found this to be quite time consuming. I'm planning to reuse this and hang it above my little one's cot, with the crosses removed from either end.








This is the cake we made. I made three mud cakes using this recipe (http://www.exclusivelyfood.com.au/2006/07/chocolate-mud-cake-recipe.html). I made them over the course of two days and had them in the freezer for a week. I stacked them on top of each other and glued them together with royal icing. We then iced the cake in buttercream and layed out the pre purchased fondant over the top. We had tried to make our own fondant and ended up throwing it in the bin at 3am a couple of nights before the Baptism because something had gone wrong. It seems that you don't actually cook the fondant and even though the recipe I used didn't say anything about cooking it, I thought that there was some kind of mistake. Note to self - always follow the recipe!!!








I bought these cupcake liners and put foil cases inside of them to stop the popcorn from making the cases greasy. I think I could make the liners, but they would be quite time consuming. They are a project to try well ahead of time. The popcorn was regular buttered popcorn, but you could do sweet caramel or a savoury popcorn like olive and chilli.




I was really pleased with the way the cupcakes turned out. I used a vanilla buttercake packet mix to make them as it seems like packet mixes taste better than when I make a butter cake from scratch. They were iced with buttercream. I also iced one batch with marshmallow icing to which I had added a small amount of rosewater. The marshmallow icing was much nicer but the buttercream gave a much better finish.

I hope you enjoy the pictures so far. Part two to come shortly.

Mary xxx