Wizard of Oz Party

Posted: September 10, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: family, Food, kids, parenting | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

My daughter turned six last week, and she wanted to have  a Wizard of Oz themed party. For her cake, I decided to do a rainbow layered thing. The idea was to make it shaped like a house, and have the Wicked Witch of the East’s legs sticking out from under it.

A few days before making the cake, I used gum paste to make the legs. I added some food coloring to make the shoes, and then I rolled those in colored sugar to make them sparkle.

I also used the gum paste to make the door and windows for the house. For the bottom layer of the cake, I used a 13×9″ pan, and one box of chocolate cake mix. Then, I used two boxes of yellow cake to make the house part. I wanted to do six layers, one for each color of the rainbow, so I divided the batter by six — and it came out to about 1 and a third cups each.

Purple was in the oven when I took this photo.

I used an 8×8 pan to make the layers for the house.

I don’t really like fondant cakes, so I don’t work with fondant. First of all, I don’t think fondant is all that tasty, but also, like I have said in the past, I don’t claim to be any kind of Martha Stewart. I don’t believe all cakes were made to look professional. They should look homemade. If anything, you should want your professionally made cakes to look like they’re homemade so that all of your party guests will think you spent all day toiling in the kitchen. That’s the mark of a good hostess.

Anyway, fully assembled and iced:

Then I went to get my daughter from school, and I guess I had assembled it too quickly, because when I got home, the whole back side had slid off:

But no, worries, just more frosting, and I kept this side against the wall:

Inside the cake:

Other touches included a green punch made of ginger ale, pineapple juice and sherbet. I put a witch’s hat over the punch bowl, so that it had looked like the witch had melted there. The punch was just okay. I mean, who even drinks punch anymore? Isn’t punch sort of a thing from a bygone era…like aspic?

I also had potato sticks to represent the Scarecrow’s straw, and a bowl full of animal crackers (Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!) The cowardly lion didn’t have much representation here, but I had silver-colored plates and napkins in honor of the Tin Man, and we also had a “Pin the Heart on the Tin Man” game.

Last, but not least, were the goodie bags, done in the color of those magical shoes. Inside there were bubbles (like those of Glenda the Good Witch) and (Manfrengensen’s idea) munchkins from Dunkin Donuts.

It was a fun party, and we all had a good time. Though by the end of the evening, I was glad to be able to put my feet up after  everyone realized that there was no place like home.

Harry Potter Quidditch Cake Pops (The Golden Snitch)

Posted: July 18, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: family, Food, kids | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

This summer Edison celebrated his eleventh birthday with a Harry-Potter-themed party. For dessert, I made these awesome cake pops:

Inside they were devil’s food.

They were quite easy to make, and I learned how to do it from the Wilton Cake site. Basically, if you can make a meatball, then you can make a cake pop. It’s a bit messy, but it works out in the end. After I had chilled the cake balls for 2 hours, I inserted the sticks and dipped them in white chocolate Wilton Candy Melts. I also used the candy melts and a squeeze bottle to pipe out the wings on a piece of wax paper.  Once the candy shell was dried, (which only took a minute or two) I spray painted the outside with Duff’s Graffiti which is like edible spray paint. I had tried to use gold flakes and gold sugar in some test batches, but the Graffiti really did the trick. It was almost like I had airbrushed the things.

When the gold was dry, I melted a little more chocolate and used that to attach the wings, which were really delicate. I made lots of extra ones to account for breakage.

And then in the goodie boxes, I included these chocolate frogs:

And those were just melted milk chocolate that I put in a mold.

And these Gryffendor cookies by my friend at snack:

Hyppogryph Pee (aka lemonade), Dragon Blood (fruit punch) and Unicorn Blood (blue raspberry Kool-Aid)

The kids all wore robes, Manfrengensen wore Dumbledore’s hat all day and spoke with the old man’s tone. The kids played a version of Quidditch in the yard that was probably closer to Capture the Flag. We also had a dragon’s egg hunt and a “Care of Magical Creatures” event that was really a three-legged race, since Edison likes to keep the action moving. A good time was had by all!