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| Dons and Harry |
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| Me and Harry (me pre=makeup and looking tired |
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| The cake with my first attempt at figure gumpaste models |
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| Dancing their hearts out |
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| Candle time |
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| Dons with all the sisters (Jules, Tarn and Tam) |
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| Doing the limbo |
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| Dons with nephew Beau |
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| Harry with some of his cousins (Hollie, Minnie, Cee-cee and Abby) |
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| Add caption |
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| The crackles (just after being made) |
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| Some of the mini cupcakes |
Although I tried to keep the food pretty standard and simple I did spend the bigger part of my week off from work preparing and baking for the day. Because it was held at dinner time we got hot chips and had other kids party delights like the obligatory red sausages, sausage rolls, chippies etc. The sweet stuff were the mini cupcakes you can see above, the chocolate crackles (my first time making them), and fruit and marshmallow kebabs. Although we had some food leftover, the kids pretty much ate most of it so I think they had all worked up a bit of an appetite dancing madly.
Most of my time in the lead up to the party was spent decorating the cake. This was my first time making gumpaste figures and although they weren't perfect, I was pretty happy with them. The disco ball was a Xmas decoration and although I had a bit of a disco ball frame malfunction, it was easily fixed with some sellotape. Colouring the fondant for all the disco floor squares was pretty time consuming as was measuring and cutting them all out. The cake was a fantastic recipe I found in the Kiwicakes forum by Petalpops. You can make it a week or two earlier, wrap it in gladwrap and store it in the fridge where it becomes more and more rich and delicious and has a lovely mud cake texture. This is a great cake for sculpting and decorating and i really urge you to give it a go as it's also very easy to make and tastes beautiful (especially with chocolate ganache to add to the chocolate hit). I bought some black fondant as it is notoriously hard to colour fondant a proper black even with the gelpaste colours so that made the decorating a little bit easier.
For home time I made chocolate whoopie pies which I put into a cellophane bag and tied it with a ribbon with a lollipop tied in it too. Of course I didn't get a photo of them but they did look lovely. In fact my photos are pretty bad...although it is hard to get good photos of anyone mid dance move! As well as that there just wasn't time to take any.
Chocolate Cake (Petal Pops)
Petalpops makes it a good 1 - 2 weeks before it is needed. Kept refrigerated it makes it dense and it does not crumble when carving 3d cakes
Bring to the boil, then simmer for 5 minutes
3 c sugar
2 c water
250gm butter
1 c cocoa powder
Allow to
cool for 10 minutes then add
1 tsp baking soda
Then
alternate mixing in:
4 beaten eggs
3 c self raising
flour
Bake 180 C until cooked (bake time depends on how big the cake is). Allow to rest for 15 minutes then remove
from tin, before the sugar sets it to make it almost impossible to get out of
tin (do allow the resting time though for the cake to relax).
She allows it to
totally cool, then gladwraps several times and refrigerate or freeze (can
freeze for up to 3 months).
