rivka | (no subject)

I have my flaws, but sometimes I think I get the mom thing right.

Alex is having a Fairy Tale Princess birthday party this afternoon.

Five or six friends will be coming over dressed in their finest princess gear. Michael and I are also dressing up in costume as the King and Queen.

I got plastic wine glasses at the party store, which the children will decorate with stick-on jewels (I decided to go for "easy" rather than "permanent") to make themselves royal goblets. We're also planning to play three games: The Cinderella Relay, in which one shoe from each kid is piled in the center of the floor and in relay teams the kids run to the middle, find their shoe, put it on, and race back to their team; Musical Sleeping Beauty, which is just like musical chairs except that instead of chairs there are beds made from baby blankets, and when the music stops the kids need to find a spot to fall asleep for a hundred years; and The Queen Says, which is a royal version of Simon Says.

Alex has been watching out the front window for her friends since right after breakfast.

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Wow, has Alex been in contact with Linnea? Because that's like the cake Linnea drew me a short while ago to show me what she wants. In your copious free time, I'd like instructions. Gosh.

I can't wait to see the party photos! Possibly the best party in the world evar!

It's surprisingly not-that-hard.

This cake comes straight from the pages of the 1957 Betty Crocker Boys and Girls Cookbook. I had this very cake when I was small. Someone has put the directions online here (http://www.ehow.com/how_5146076_create-castle-cake.html).

Assembly notes: it is very hard to ice a cake that has been cut into shapes like this. The cut sides want to crumble and the icing wants to tear cake away. It is best to use a very light and fluffy icing. Cut the cake into the right pieces, then chill it. Put a thin layer of icing all around to glue on the crumbs, and chill it again. Then your top coat of icing will be put on against a hardened layer of icing, not against crumbly cake, and it will hold together better and lay down smoother.

Decorating notes: I put the cake on a sheet of aluminum foil to be the moat. The windows and doors are chocolate - the kind of chocolate bar that breaks away in little squares. The drawbridge is pretzel sticks - I put a dab of icing on the moat to stick them into place. The crenellations along the top are little pillow mints. The turrets are ice cream cones, coated with icing and then rolled in colored sugar. The grass is shredded coconut dyed with food coloring.

Ooh, thanks! I think the chill-ice-chill-ice sequence is going to be a lifesaver. I shall have to practice icing recipes a bit.

Also, using icecream cones instead of cake for the turrets would never have occurred to me in a million years. Thank you!

I can't imagine how you could possibly make cake cone-shaped. Special pans, I guess? But even then!

I used prepackaged icing. For the first time in my life. Because my sister warned me that homemade buttercream would be way too heavy.

I had never done the "crumb coat" layer of icing before. The cake looks so pathetic when only that is on! But it really did make all the difference.

I've used prepackaged icing but it's definitely heavier than what I make myself - but then, I ice cakes MAYBE twice a year, usually, so what would I know? And before I had Linnea, I'm not sure I ever iced one... it's quite possible that the first cake we iced was her second birthday cake.

Oh - and I figured cutting cone-shapes from loaf cakes, and making little roll-out icing cone covers for them, glued on with hot jam.