Batman Boys Party - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Our eldest recently turned 7 and he requested a superhero party with a batman cake. Decisive children sure make party planning easy! I decided to buy a bat cutter to make my life easier, safe in knowing that I could use it multiple ways for maximum value. You can copy my spider man tablecloth idea with a similar spider web table cover we stock here at Kiwicakes.

On the party morning we pressed bat shapes out of a loaf of fluffy toast slice white bread and put them back in the airtight bread bag. Just before the party we spread them with a thin layer of softened butter and sprinkled with 100s&1000s. These would have looked extra awesome with yellow sprinkles instead. Mind you, the plate was clear in seconds so they must have had kid appeal as they were.

We used the bat bread off cuts to make our kids french toast for breakfast before the party began. I love the looks of pure delight they reward us with for the simplest things!

For his cake I baked two 9" chocolate cakes and sliced off their dome tops. I sandwiched them with a generous layer of orange buttercream made simple using orange flavacol (or you can buy pre-made coloured buttercream to use). Then I crumb coated the cake exterior with the same buttercream using a spatula and covered it in orange pettinice. I trimmed the excess but didnt need to be too picky making the base beautiful as it was to be covered up anyway. I used the bat cutter yet another time for the black logo stuck on top.

I used refill paper to mock up a cityscape and moved them all around until I was happy. I used them as pattern pieces to cut out black fondant buildings, which I stuck around with sugar glue. Little yellow fondant squares (made simple with a square plunger cutter) look like evening lights when placed randomly. Tall black candles completed the look.  

Here is the happy superhero with his birthday cake!

Yet another way I used the same bat cutter was creating iced cookies for take-home gifts. Little superheroes-in-the-making sure need loads of food for sustenance. I used my alphabet cutter set to personalise the cookies with our birthday boys name.

Racing Fever Party - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Racing Fever hit our house last weekend with a little man turning 4. In the spirit of the party he asked to be called 'Throttle' for the afternoon! Kids had a sausage sizzle and races on trikes before hitting the sweet treats table...

Cupcakes in finish-line themed gingham black & white cases iced with Lightning McQueen and Mater sugar decorations and international racing flag picks went down well.

These racy fruit cars were made by a dedicated Nana. She dipped the cored apple wedges in lemon juice and skewered two toothpick axles with halved grapes as wheels. Brooom brooom!

I made this chocolate brownies ahead of time and froze it until the day before the party. Cut into fingers with a few drops of icing and colour-selective smarties later we had instant tasty traffic light fingers. My kids loved helping to assemble these.

Racing car chocolates were made with melted milkybar chocolate in an 8-piece mould. Racing features were painted on with a red clicktwist brush. An even easier option would be to use bright candy melts in either blue, green, orange, red, lime or yellow to match your party colours. 

These racing teddies are always a hit. This time we used tasty pineapple lumps for the body of the cars and used a little leftover chocolate icing to stick on mini m&m wheels and candy teddies. A nice size for little hands to enjoy!

  

As a take home gift I made towtruck Mater cookies with a cookie cutter and embosser set. Packaged up in favour bags they looked really neat and the kids could all identify this hero character instantly! 

I baked and cooled chocolate cookies, cut and embossed fondant shapes then adhered them to the cookies with sugar glue. Once the fondant had hardened overnight they were detailed with a black click twist brush on the wheels, a green food pen for his eyes, a pearl white click twist brush for his teeth (and importantly) only one headlight, a red click twist brush for his tongue and a dark gold click twist brush for some random rusty spots. 

Lastly here is my skite photo. Could this little man be any cuter!? Watch out for a tutorial on his Race Track cake to be added to the blog shortly.

Princess Elsa's Coronation Frozen Party Menu - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

If you need inspiration for a winter wonderland themed party then check out this balanced mix of fun food ideas from my daughter's party recently. 

I labelled the individual dishes as our party girls are at the school age where they love learning to read and these gave them some giggles. We have stylish tags available online at Kiwicakes too.

Slices like this can be made up to a week in advance, covered in coconut 'snow' and stored in the fridge until party day. 

I love the crunch and vibrancy these bought to the table.

  

Yum yum hot from the oven. The 5 & 6 year old party girls thought this sign was hilarious! In the background you can spot the easiest table decoration ever - a tall glass vase filled with sparkly blue and silver christmas baubles.

These lemonade tasting 'clouds' were soft and billowy. Thank goodness for nanas who bake and help with food prep.

I was careful to avoid peanuts in the party food so these are almonds.

I normally endorse buying New Zealand made but in winter I feel lucky that Australia exports these summery fruit here and surprisingly at a really reasonable price. We bought 3 punnets and this was the first dish to run out!

We served creaming soda drinks (similar to lemonade) in these cool clear retro bottles. Check out the range of various designs we have in stock. Alternatively you could fill them with water, blue fanta or milk and all would still pass as 'melted snow'.

These cookies can be made a day ahead and are a fun project for kids to assist with. You will need shortbread cookies, white marshmallows, white chocolate, licorice, dried apricots and blue sugar pearls on your shopping list. The more inconsistent and 'melted' they look the better!

I think this jelly shortcake slice beats jelly cups which never seem to get finished. And leftovers make great lunchbox surprises for days to come. This was made with 50:50 blueberry and lemonade packet jelly mixes to get the mid-aqua colour.

Plump raisins were offered as 'snowman eyes' but you could even use chocolate drops or other confectionery.

A party is not a party in my house until there are cocktail sausages. Enough said.

These store-bought pretzel sticks made nice woody-looking 'arms'. Eskimo lollies are another easy supermarket item to pick up that is in keeping with the theme.

Lastly we sent the kids home with a signature handcrafted cookie. Its easy to do.

This snowflake cookie is topped with fondant which is gently ice coloured, with the same snowflake  cookie cutter, stuck on with sugar glue, finished with a dash of glacier glitter and presented in a favour bag. 

Big smiles all around!

Butterfly Party Food - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Last month our wee girl Indie turned 4. She's into all little insects, bugs (and even slugs!) so we ran with a butterfly party theme. This is her cake and it is followed by plenty of plenty of sweet treat ideas below...

As I do with all my kids parties, I popped a keyword into the Kiwicakes Quick Find box for decorating inspiration. The search "butterfly" currently brings up 41 varied products to enhance cakes and parties. Our party table was full of edible fluttering beauties.

These ever-popular honey rice bubble cakes were made by my mum. Bless! The mini butterflies on top look like they are ready to take off. They were made the day before with thinly rolled pink fondant (with a pinch of tylose worked in) stamped out with a mini plunger cutter, sprinkled ever so lightly with some pink glitter and set to dry resting in a v-shape overnight. Like all pink/purple fondants remember to keep these in a dark place away from fading UV light. Shoe boxes are great for fondant decorations as they are dark yet they still breathe. The sparkly butterflies were adhered with a wee dab of electric pink coloured royal icing just before serving. Royal icing can also be made, coloured and refrigerated in a piping bag in advance.

These pretty cookies are a basic chocolate biscuit base shaped with a butterfly plunger cutter. Coloured fondant was plunged with the wing design and adhered to each baked cookie with sugar glue. Again these can be made in the days leading up to the party.

Here's a twist on regular fairy bread - just use the same butterfly plunger cutter as for the cookies above. It makes a nicely sized item for small hands!  Lightly butter soft white toast slice bread and dip into/sprinkle over non pareils of your choice. You will get 4-5 butterflies per slice of bread. To stay fresh these must be assembled right before serving so enlist some help! I know I am mad but I proudly save the crusts and trimmings so later on I can turn them into an easy and colour-spiked bread and butter pudding with currants and zesty lemon that everybody loves. Yum.

These winged beauties were made on the morning of the party. All you need is a bag of pretzels, a bag of pascall clinkers, a wee bit of melted chocolate in a disposable piping bag and some edible bling! This is best achieved as a 2 person job as you need to work quickly while the chocolate is still warm. Kids loved seeing the surprise colour inside the chocolate clinker and the pretzels added to the savoury mix on a very sweet-laden table offering.

Inside the birthday cake I electrified my everyday cake batter by marbling 3 coloured batter portions. I used a wee squirt of gel colours neon colours , swirled them together with a cake tester before baking. I made a double mix to fill a round and a square tin. The butterfly torso was 1/3 of the square cake and the remainder was cut in half for the top wing shapes. The bottom larger wings were two halves of the circle.

To crumb coat the butterfly body and wings I made a ganache using 2 Cadbury blocks (so 440g dairy milk chocolate) chopped and added into 180ml almost boiling cream. The fondant-covered cake was decorated with flowery panels utilising my floral impression mat set and topped off with pastel coloured share-pack mini mentos lollies.

Pecan nut truffles

These delicious pecan nut truffles are so moreish. The Kiwicakes team have declared them "the best new thing they've tasted in ages."

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups pecans toasted and finely chopped
1 cup of Super Wine biscuit crumbs (or Graham cracker crumbs if you can find them in NZ)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
Generous 1/4 cup maple syrup
1/8 cup Brandy
1 tsp of vanilla or vanilla bean paste (I used paste)

Use at least 250g chocolate for dipping - more allows you to fill the dipping container, which makes it much easier to dip the truffles. Any leftover chocolate can be used to dip some dried fruit, always a lovely addition to a dessert platter.

With my leftover chocolate I decided to dip dried mango. Because dried mango usually comes in quite large pieces, I cut mine up using scissors and then dipped the cut edge in the chocolate.

I used 30 orange mini foil cupcake papers for the truffles, as I thought they looked great alongside the dried mango slices.

Hairy Maclary is 30!

Hairy Maclary has been entertaining children all over the world for 30 years. To celebrate this, Oh Baby! magazine has created this wonderful birthday party. I was pleased to help with supplies for this wonderful party. (Currently if you buy this issue of Oh Baby! magazine at the supermarket, it comes with a free Hairy Maclary book).

I wish my kids were tiny again - they loved Hairy Maclary books and after seeing this photo shoot, I wish I could have a Hairy Maclary party too. I adore the dog bowl cake - what an awesome idea.

Our dog bone cookie cutter was used for the cookies, I love how they put different names on each bone. And our stainless steel ice cream cone holder looks awesome on the party table

Our dog bone cookie cutter was also used for the sandwiches and take home party favours.

(article copied with permission from Oh Baby!)

Chocolate Potato Chips - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

We were recently introduced to this ultimate indulgence. Potato chips and chocolate together - what could be better?

Sandra's good friend Leisa from Hong Kong needs a special mention for visiting and bringing a pack. Its a Japanese Company called Royce who make and distribute them professionally.

We took up the challenge to recreate the delicacy with local kiwi products and it worked surprisingly well. They even stayed crisp! You could use milk or dark chocolate to paint the potato chips of your choice.  I used milk melting chocolate brushed on both ripples and kettle chips from the supermarket with a wide paintbrush. Salt and vinegar and ready salted were popular but you could go crazy.

Lastly I used cupcake papers for fun presentation (and portion control!) This is so easy I encourage you to have a go next time you have friends over to watch a sports game. You will be popular!

Fun Ten Pin Bowling party

This fun ten pin bowling party I organised for my daughter's tenth birthday (where did all those years go?).

My little boy immediately decided this is the party he wants when he turns 7 in July, so I'll have to think of a few things to change for his party. Bowling parties as a theme in NZ is not that common - so I started browsing ETSY and immediately fell in love with a print your own file, for bowling party supplies. It worked out far more economically than buying the items (especially as I'll be doing this party again)

The banner included with the printables also came with the word BOWL - but we had little room to hang the banner, as it was, so I thought the sign would look great on the table. The sticks are red retro paper straws from here.. I used these mini milk bottles as vases. And anchored them in the bottle with chocolate sixlets (which I also used again in the little red gumball machines). I also used these same bottles for the girls for lemonade.

We used a printable from Etsy to create little stickers for the bottom of Hersheys kisses

The sign was customised for Poppy's party and placed in an inexpensive black frame purchased from Warehouse stationery.

These little red M&M containers came from the supermarket and I added the water bottle labels printable to make them super cute.

I used an edible marker pen to draw the round dots, which represented the finger holes on my macarons to make them look like bowling balls.

The tiny little cookies had edible images on them, all bowling themed 

Everytime I throw a birthday party for my children, I always include popcorn cups, it is the very first thing to be eaten (every time!). The boxes are square le petit gateau cupcake papers.

The take home gifts for the party guests were Hershey's bars wrapped with a customised label and little red gumball machines filled with pearl lime green and pearl powder blue sixlets.

Poppy had told me months ago, she was going to design her own cake and she wanted to help make it. This is the sketch we started with. Together we discussed the cake sketch - as the top tier was only 4'' and the bottom tier 7'' (she only had 4 friends coming to her party) - we had to make a few design modifications.

This was our resulting cake, a joint effort for me & Poppy. She was really happy with how it came out.