This year you are going to throw your child a birthday party—cake, decorations, games—the works. And as your child throws her arms around you at the news, for a moment, you are truly tops.
From planning the theme and games together to decorating the house and cake, you and your birthday girl (or boy) share the anticipation and excitement. Even the big day goes smoothly because you planned out everything in advance (Dad’s timetable) and kept the party short (Party tips). And the smile on her face when you bring out the “cake that Dad made” makes it all worthwhile.
A theme for a party can be just about anything, including favorite superheroes, characters from a well-loved book, animals, or a favorite sport. Let the theme influence all aspects of the party. If it’s a dinosaur party, for example, play Pin the Tail on the Dinosaur and get some dinosaur cookie cutters and cut cookies or sandwiches into dinosaur shapes. You can even put little dinosaurs on the birthday cake. If it’s an alphabet party (a good idea for very young kids), make letter-shaped cookies and let each child try to spell his or her name. Have extra cookies on hand so kids with short names don’t feel cheated.
Create a large mural
Get some plain brown wrapping paper and tape a long sheet of it to the floor. Give each kid an assigned space on the paper and some colored pencils, crayons, stickers, or stencils.
Musical chairs
You need space for this. Make a circle of chairs with the seats facing out, one for each kid, less one. Play the piano or put some fun music on the stereo and have the kids walk around the chairs until you stop the music suddenly. The child who’s left without a chair is out. The rounds continue until only one child is left sitting. Have a prize ready for the winner.
Make a large collage
Buy a roll of transparent contact paper. Remove the backing, lay the paper, sticky side up on the floor, and tape it down at the edges. Get out the big bag of stuff you’ve collected over the past few weeks—bits of yarn, bottle caps, string, small pieces of colored paper, foreign coins, and pictures from magazines. Have the kids sit along the length of the contact paper and stick on their items of choice.
Make your own music videos
(You’ll need a video camera for this one.) On the invitation, ask each child to bring a cassette of a favorite song (s)he knows very well. Provide a box full of costume pieces—old clothes, hats, and accessories—for the kids to put on, and find a neutral background. Set up the camera and cassette player and let the kids sing along or lip-sync the songs as they move to the music.
Hold backyard races
If you have a backyard, set up lots of relay races, two-legged races, potato sack races, and obstacle courses.
Set up a treasure hunt
Kids love treasure hunts with lots of clues—enlist a few neighbors to have clues hidden on their porches or in their yards.
Pass the parcel
Get a small gift for each child, for example, a box of decorated Band-Aids, a Matchbox car, magnets, crayons, flip books, or playing cards. Wrap 1 item, then wrap the second item with the first, then the third with the first 2, and continue until all presents are wrapped in 1 large package. The kids sit in a circle and unwrap the parcel 1 layer at a time and keep the toy they unwrap. The last toy should be special as the last kid has to wait the longest.
Make body puzzles
Get a few rolls of brown wrapping paper and spread out kid-sized sheets of it on the floor. Have the kids lie on the paper on their backs and ask an adult to trace their outlines with a crayon. Have the kids color their own figures. Then have the adults cut out the figures and then cut the figures into 6 or 7 large sections. The kids now have puzzles of their bodies. Mix up the pieces and have a race to see who can reassemble themselves the fastest.
4–5 Weeks Before the Party
Decide on the location and theme for the party. Send out invitations.
2 Weeks Before the Party
Get all the paper plates, tablecloths, candles, and plasticware you need. Decide on what activities and games you want to play and buy any supplies you need. This is also a good time to enlist a neighborhood teenager or favorite babysitter to help out at the party.
2 Days Before the Party
Prepare your shopping list and shop for the food and party favors. Remember all of the ingredients necessary for cake, frosting, and toppings.
1 Day Before
Bake the cake and frost.
The Day of the Party
9:00 Make the food. Do all the chopping and crumbling, and make the ice cream scoops. Be sure anything that needs defrosting has been attended to.
11:00 Decorate the space, setting new trends in your work with balloons and rolls of crepe paper. Set the lunch table. Make sure your table is well protected with a tablecloth.
1:00 The guests start arriving. Collect the gifts, making sure cards are firmly attached so you can help your child write thank-yous. Put the gifts out of the way until later.
1:15 Get the activities started. If you are having entertainment of any kind—a clown, a pony, a video—this is when it should happen.
2:00 Serve lunch.
2:30 Serve dessert and the birthday cake. The party photographer (maybe Mom will volunteer for this job) should get in position for the blowing-out of the candles.
3:00 Open gifts and hand out the party bags.
3:30 Make sure each of your child’s friends leaves with his or her parent or other responsible adult.
3:45 Pop a video in the VCR for your child to watch. Give yourself a pat on the back and collapse.
The highlight of a birthday party is always the cake. However, if you want to feed the kids a little something before dessert, here are ideas for the munchies and the main course.
Try to keep the chips to a minimum; instead, serve bowls of air-popped popcorn and low-salt pretzels as well as fun-to-eat fruits like grapes, bananas, and berries.
The most popular party food to serve both the kids and their parents. You can make the pies yourself (see page 237) or order in. Be sure you have plenty of plain slices for the kids who don’t like extra toppings. Figure on 1½ slices per child.
Follow the directions on the back of the taco seasoning packet but use ground turkey instead of ground beef. Put out bowls of shredded lettuce, chopped tomato, shredded cheese, and mild salsa, and let the kids build their own tacos. This can get messy, but it’s also a lot of fun.
Get some brown lunch bags and write the kids’ names on them. Fill each bag with a peanut butter-and-jelly, tuna salad, turkey, or cheese sandwich (preferably on whole wheat bread), a small bag of trail mix, and an apple. Put a little toy in the bag, like they do at the fast-food chains, and the kids will be thrilled.
An outdoor barbecue is a great idea provided, of course, your child was born in the spring of summer. If your grill station isn’t protected from the rain, have a back-up plan ready (for instance, the telephone number of the nearest pizza parlor).
This is a great party food because it can be made weeks ahead of time and frozen until the day of the party. See page 184 for the recipe.
If you can get away with it, skip the soda; instead, have plenty of milk (regular and chocolate) and all-natural fruit juice on hand. And don’t forget the straws!
You don’t have to make a cake from scratch to make your child’s birthday party terrific (with all the excitement, the kids won’t know the difference). Buy a cake mix (one box will yield two layers), and take the extra five minutes to make your own frosting (recipe follows). But there is a certain pride in making your own cake. Bake it the night before the party so you have energy for the sugar highs of the next day.
This is the perfect birthday cake because it’s foolproof and can be decorated just about any way imaginable. With the same batter you can also make cupcakes or a sheet cake. Directions for the variations are given at the end of the recipe.
Ingredients (makes one 3-layer cake)
4 large eggs
1¼ cups (2½ sticks) butter or margarine, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing the cake pans
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups cake flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
Equipment
3 9-inch round cake pans (disposable aluminum pans are fine)
2 medium bowls
Small bowl
Large bowl
Hand-held electric mixer
Whisk
Large rubber spatula
Cake tester or toothpick
Cooling racks
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2. Place a 9-inch round cake pan on a piece of wax paper and trace around the bottom with a pencil. Cut out the circle, then repeat 2 more times for a total of 3 circles. Butter 3 9-inch round cake pans. Lay the wax paper circles in the cake pans, and lightly butter them.
3. Separate the eggs, putting the whites in a medium bowl and the yolks in a small bowl.
4. In a large bowl, using a hand-held electric mixer on medium-low speed, cream the butter, 1½ cups of the sugar, and the vanilla until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Add the egg yolks in 2 additions, beating well after each addition. Rinse and dry the beaters.
5. In a second medium bowl, whisk together the cake flour, baking powder, and salt.
6. Using a hand-held electric mixer on low speed, beat the egg whites until foamy and opaque, about 30 seconds. Raise the speed to medium and continue beating until very soft peaks begin to form. In a slow, steady stream, add the remaining ½ cup sugar and continue beating until firm (but not stiff) peaks form.
7. Using a large rubber spatula, alternately fold the flour mixture and the milk into the butter mixture in 3 additions each. Do not mix the batter vigorously.
8. When the flour and milk have been incorporated, use a rubber spatula to gently fold in the beaten egg whites in 3 additions (see Note).
9. Divide the batter among the 3 prepared cake pans and bake on the center rack of the oven for about 25 minutes, until a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. If the cakes don’t all fit on one oven rack, the cake on the top rack may take a bit longer.
10. Let the cakes cool on racks for 1 hour before removing them from the pans. Let the cakes cool another 30 minutes before frosting.
Variations
• To make cupcakes, lightly grease a cupcake tin and insert paper liners. Fill the liners ⅔ of the way to the top with batter and bake for 21 minutes. Let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting. This recipe makes 24 cupcakes.
• To feed a larger group, this batter can easily be turned into a sheet cake. First, increase all the ingredients 1½ times. Instead of using 3 round cake pans, use an 11 x 17-inch baking pan. Prepare the baking pan in the same way, by greasing the pan with butter or margarine, laying on a sheet of wax paper cut to fit inside, and lightly greasing the wax paper. Bake for the same amount of time, 25 minutes. Test for doneness with a toothpick or cake tester. Let the cake cool completely, at least 1 hour. Then run a butter knife around the edge of the cake, loosening it from the pan. Lay the bottom of a second baking pan of equal size over the cake and then invert. Cut a piece of cardboard the same size as the cake and place it over the cake. Invert the cake onto the cardboard. It’s now ready for frosting. This rectangular cake can be easily decorated to look like a football field, basketball or volleyball court, or dinosaur play area.
After you whip the egg whites, it is important to incorporate them into the batter without causing them to lose all the air you have beaten into them. You must add them slowly, or “fold” them in, using a large rubber spatula. As you add the egg whites to the batter, move the spatula continuously in a slow, steady motion down the edge of the bowl and up through the center, until the egg whites are completely incorporated.
Ingredients (enough for a 3-layer cake)
5 ounces semisweet chocolate
½ cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
4 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
½ teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Equipment
Double boiler or saucepan and stainless-steel bowl to fit on top
Medium bowl
Hand-held electric mixer
Sifter
1. Melt the chocolate in the top of a double boiler or in a stainless-steel bowl set in a saucepan filled with 3 inches of very gently simmering water, stirring the chocolate frequently as it melts. Remove the chocolate from the heat and set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, using a hand-held electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter until light and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate. Gradually beat the sifted sugar into the butter mixture until fully incorporated. Beat in the salt, heavy cream, and vanilla.
3. Gradually beat in the remaining 1 cup sugar until the frosting is smooth and spreadable.
Young kids tend to like their frosting in different colors, for example, lime green and pale pink. All it takes is a few drops of food coloring, so go ahead and indulge your child’s fancy.
Ingredients (enough for a 3-layer cake)
14 tablespoons (1¾ sticks) butter, at room temperature
5 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
½ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons heavy cream or whole milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Equipment
Medium bowl
Sifter
Hand-held electric mixer
1. In a medium bowl, using a hand-held electric mixer set at high speed, beat the butter until light and fluffy, about 2 to 3 minutes. With the mixer running, gradually add 4 cups of the sifted sugar, ½ cup at a time, until it is fully incorporated. Add the salt, cream or milk, and vanilla, and continue beating until well combined.
2.Gradually beat in the remaining 1 cup sugar a few tablespoons at a time, until the frosting is smooth and spreadable. (You may not need to use all the sugar.)
1. Cut a circle slightly smaller than the cake out of heavy cardboard. Place the circle on a cake stand or a flat surface.
2. If your cake layers are rounded on top, cut off the rounded portion by holding a serrated knife parallel to the work surface and gently sawing through the cake to make it flat.
3. Place 1 of the cake layers on the cardboard. Spread the frosting over the top of the first layer with a rubber spatula or a long-bladed metal spatula.
4. Place the second layer on top of the frosting and press down very gently so that the cakes are as even as possible. Frost the top of the second cake.
5. Place the third layer neatly on top of the second layer, then frost the top. Once the top is frosted, begin working around the sides, applying the frosting in short, circular strokes. Always be gentle with the cake, especially around the sides.
6. After the cake is frosted, it should be refrigerated. Use a cake box from your local bakery or a plastic cake saver. Or make a tent out of aluminum foil using toothpicks; insert them into the cake to keep the foil from touching the top or sides of the cake. You may have to touch up the frosting in some places before serving.
Here are four easy and fun ways to decorate your child’s birthday cake. If you have the patience—and time—invite your child to help. Most important of all, don’t forget the candles.
• Buy tubes of colored decorating icing (available in most grocery stores) and a couple of small plastic figures (available at toy stores as well as party and card shops). Any kind of figure or small toy will do, as long as it is light—and you remember to remove it before serving the cake. Think about what your little Ninja Turtle-fan, Batman-fan, Sesame Street-fan, or troll-lover might like to see on top of his or her cake. Then use the tubes of colored icing to embellish the figures and to write a birthday message to your child.
• Buy a selection of brightly-colored candies, such as candied fruit slices, lollipops, gum drops, and jelly beans, and arrange them on the top and sides of the cake in a decorative fashion.
• For a more sophisticated effect, use a decorating comb (available at specialty food stores) to decorate the cake. Place the cake on a cake stand and frost as usual. Immediately after the whole cake is frosted, dip the comb in hot water and shake off the excess, then place the edge of the comb at a slight angle on the side of the cake and gently draw the comb around the sides (by turning the cake stand) so that decorative lines are imprinted in the frosting. To decorate the top of the cake, place the edge of the comb at a slight angle on the top of the cake and turn the cake stand, holding the comb still.
• If you are trying to keep the party food at least marginally healthy, decorate the cake with fresh berries, such as blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries. For a particularly decorative effect, place two contrasting colors of berries (such as blackberries and raspberries) in concentric circles on the top of the cake and place a ring of berries around the bottom edge of the cake. This looks best with white frosting.