Party food

Unfortunately whilst in the midst of Charlotte's first birthday, the only photos I got were of cake time. So to get all the party blogging started, here's some of the food I made


My menu originally looked something like this:
Savoury:
Party pies (buying)
sausage rolls (buying or making, depends on if the bought ones are any good)
mini quiches (making)
Pizza scrolls
french stick sandwiches (easy to get a lot done fast)
Rice paper rolls (served cold, so less work on the day)
Cheese & Bikkies
dip with carrot and celery sticks

Sweet:
Cookies (iced)
Fairy bread (1/2 normal, 1/2 made with nutella)
Apple & cinnamon scrolls
birthday cake
Jelly cups

The party did start at 2pm and was just afternoon tea, so as it got closer and I ran out of time items just get getting crossed off the list and not done. With what we had out there was still food floating around but not vast amounts of left overs, so I think if I had gone through with it all there would have been a lot of wastage. My one piece of advice for kids parties is not to over think it.

Nutella fairy bread

Pizza scrolls
I skipped the bacon, used half a packet of shredded ham from Aldi, and added some crushed pineapple as well. I made 2 lots of this recipe, and there were none left. Enough said :)

Jelly cups
Best to write down the calculations rather than do them in your head because "I'm a scientist, surely I can work out layered jelly". Apparently I can't do this in my head, and since I made all of the red jelly up at once instead of doing a few smaller batches, the 235ml plastic cups I used ended up with 200ml of raspberry jelly each in it. It wasn't a big drama, as it colour coordinated with the party and were a big hit too, but not quite what I was going for. I also now have 8 packets of passion fruit flavoured jelly to use. at least Charlotte loves sharing jelly with me :)

Cakes:
I used the chocolate mud cake recipe out of a Women's Weekly cake book. Not THE cake book that you may remember from your childhood (which incidentally is being re-released and I can't wait to get myself a copy), but Cooking Class: Cake Decorating, which still has some great designs in it for all occasions . I made extra of the cake batter so there would be cupcakes left over for the kids. Since I'd decided to have a go at decorating the main cake with fondant (my first time using it the day before the party, and I have to say it was actually fairly easy with the dome shapes I was using) I thought cupcakes with butter cream icing would be better for them. They also then wouldn't need to wait for me to cut the cake and could just grab one and run outside to eat it.

So here is the end result of my first foray into the world of fondant

I started off with the pink, and then did the head separately and then stuck them together with a bit of sugar syrup. Being my first time, I didn't want to try cutting the fondant at the join and trying to get it perfect, so between the head and the body there is actually 4 layers of icing, crumb layer for each piece of cake and then the top final layer folded down and wrapping right around the piece. Then I used a letter "O" cookie cutter and got the white and black circles needed for the eyes and the body dots. The black for the iris and the line down the back are from some edible markers that my decorator mother got from the US for me

With the cupcakes set out too:

As I said, the cupcakes are decorated with a butter cream icing and then we stuck chocolate drops on.