Bug Birthday Party and Spider Cake

My youngest son turned 4 the other day and since he is obssessed with bugs (spends most of his waking hours checking our swan plants covered in monarch butterfly caterpillars), we decided to throw him a bug party.

The invitations asked everyone to bring a live bug with them. We got snails, slaters, a centipede and some caterpillars, all of which were admired, judged and medals awarded. We made some fake magifying glasses with clear cellophane and the kids used these to hunt for the tiny rubber ladybirds hidden in the garden. Very cute.

Of course, the cake was a spider web with a big spider on top. I covered the cake in blue icing, then made really thick red icing and rolled it up to make the spider web. My hands were stained red for 24 hours.

Let Dads Decorate Boys Birthday Cakes

My eldest son has just turned 5 and ended up with 2 parties and 2 cakes. While organising the events we discovered that my husband has a hidden talent for cake decorating. I asked him to help create a tractor shape for the first cake and before I knew it, he had taken over and made a tractor with trailer and decorated it with  wheels, grass surround, funnel, seat and windshield. It was a big hit with all the little boys.

By the time we got to the next party, his reputation had spread and we just handed him a round cake with hole in the middle and a whole lot of banana cake train carriages (my Mum has a muffin tin with train shapes for mixture). He demanded different coloured icing, a selection of licorice and lollies and went to work. The second masterpiece had a train running on a track which continued over a bridge. The lanscaping was complete with a duck pond full of little licorice allsort ducks and my son’s name on the railway bridge and each of the train carriages had malteser wheels glued on with icing. It wasn’t only the kids lining up to request the best bits at cake cutting time…

Photos of both birthday cakes below.

 

I think it’s time we acknowledged that men generally know a lot more about machines like tractors and trains and should therefore be in the frontline for decorating these sort of birthday cakes. Would love to hear about other Dads who decorate (cakes that is).

For more great cake ideas, get Kids’ Birthday Cakes (“Australian Women’s Weekly”).

Gruffalo Birthday Cake for Boys

Connor turned 3 last week and we had a Gruffalo birthday party inspired by his favourite book, “The Gruffalo”. We had a Gruffalo Cake (not my best effort, but the kids loved it), played stick the wart on the Gruffalo (see photo below) and gave all the kids Gruffalo’s Child Playdough to take home (homemade green playdough full of marbles, spiders and snakes).

   

Connor’s favourite birthday present was a huge dinosaur from his great Grandma. It looked like it was made of hard plastic but was actually some sort of flexible rubber.  See photo above.

13th June 2008

Our cake is in the Gruffalo Gallery. Visit www.gruffalo.com/gruffalogallery