My eyes lit up as I opened Bite a few weeks ago; it featured an article on catering for a
little girl’s birthday party. How timely, I thought ─ me too!
But as I read the article and looked at the pictures of the
table adorned with hydrangeas and orchard apples, the strings of homemade
bunting, the homemade lemonade served in those achingly cool old-fashioned
bottles with those retro red and white striped straws, the pastel macarons and
cake pops, my delight slowly dissipated.
The reality of preparing for Emily’s third birthday party
was somewhat different. Think classic Kiwi kid kitsch. Instead of homemade
lemonade ─ Just Juice cartons. Instead of bunting ─ garish pink balloons.
Instead of macarons ─ fairy bread, popcorn and Twisties. (As a quick
digression, I was relieved to see they still make Twisties – for my British
friends, they are sort of like Wotsits; they are the lurid orange morsels in the centre of the pic below. They also still make Burger Rings – I spent
a good few minutes in the snack aisle of Pak n Save gazing nostalgically at the
junk food of my childhood, trying to choose which I would lovingly pour into a
bowl for my soon-to-be three-year-old and her friends, and ignoring the judgmental
looks from other trolley pushers.)
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, children’s parties. Here’s what
I have learned about kids’ parties. From about five years old and onwards, kids’
parties truly become kids’ parties. Upon receiving an invitation (and this is
important – dropping your uninvited child at a party for a spot of free
childcare is generally frowned upon) you can leave your child and gift with some
poor frazzled parent who has agreed to turn their house into a pirate ship or
fairy castle out of love (and a smidgen of peer pressure) for their little
birthday sprog. There is no need for adult catering, or even a particularly
gleaming house. There is no need to learn the names, occupations and
interests of all your son’s friends’ parents. Sausage rolls and pass-the-parcel
will suffice. Meanwhile, two hours later, the drop-off parent returns – filled with
the warmth of coffee, shopping and alone time, maybe even with a sneaky haircut
– to find their child, face-painted and cake-filled, sporting party bags,
blowing those party whistle things, balloons tied to ears, shrieking that
he also wants a monster truck that talks for his birthday.
Of course, this is how I
imagine it will be, having not yet entered ‘drop off’ party zone yet; we’re
still in the pre-school years (although this household will see a fifth
birthday before the year is out!) A three-year-old’s party needs to be
tolerable for the long-suffering parents who sacrifice their Saturday mornings
to be dragged by their kids to these parties.
So, I decided whatever shortcuts I may have taken at the crisp
aisle and bulk bins of Pak n Save for the kids, I would attempt to make up for
with pastries for the adults. While I’m getting better at Danish pastries, they
still took me a ridiculously long time to make, but worth it I think. The savoury pastries and brioche featured
feta, pesto, sundried tomatoes and spinach. Their sweeter equivalents had different
combos of frangipane, dark chocolate, lemon curd and cream cheese.
The party was a success, which, considering we had fifteen kids and sixteen adults in our less-than-palatial house on a winter’s Saturday, was a relief. A magician kept the kids (and adults!) entertained and the pastries went down really well ─ I was delighted to find them all gone at the end of the party... until Neil declared that he’d eaten six himself. While he meant this as a compliment, I had to explain the FHB rule to him for future reference – Family Holds Back.
One aspect of the party that I was never going to compromise
on was, of course, the cake. I know some people favour the surprise-the-child
approach to birthday cakes, but I love the build-up, the planning, the
short-listing of potential cake candidates, the input into the design, and even
the “help” in making it. For those of you who know Emily well, you will believe
me when I say she was very involved in each of these stages. She chose several
cake books from the library and then deliberated over their pages for several
weeks. With some gentle dissuasion from a rather evil looking snake cake (what
IS it with Emily’s love of snakes?!) and an extremely complicated Noah’s Ark
masterpiece (a very accurate interpretation featuring virtually every creature
two-by-two in fondant icing glory), she eventually settled on a fairy
toadstool. Voilà!
Never.
TTFN x
