Marmalade Cake

I’m sorry, I have been neglecting you. I’ve been pretty pre-occupied lately with NOT SMOKING or EATING DELICIOUS FOOD and have lost my “funny” a bit. (Some may say it was never there to lose, but to those people I say “Piss off! You miserable wanker”)

I have been baking though, and because I’m not planning on any parties (apart from two dinner parties in March) you’re just going to have to put up with reading about my cakes and flapjacks *smirk* and various weird stuff I’m filling my weekend’s with rather than smoking lovely cigarettes and eating nice food that isn’t vegetable and zero fat.

At Christmas my lovely Nan received a hamper from the Railway Pension People/Old Age Community Centre/Christians (I can’t remember) and in amongst the shortbread and christmas puddings (which was also a waste as Nan was the lucky recipient of my home made Christmas Puddings, which she assured me was the best she had ever tasted) a jar of seville orange marmalade – which she promptly gave to me, even though I hate it.

Seville Oranges are in season now, and although I haven’t made my own marmalade because it’s revolting I decided to bake a marmalade cake. Marmalade Cake has the added bonus of being repellant to me and delicious to the boys, it’s a win/win.

I used a recipe from my latest CoookBook purchase, the fabulous and uplifting “Great British Bake Off” book.

I really should stop using books as mats

So, I made a cake batter by creaming together the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy before adding eggs and then folding in the flour and baking powder followed by a blob of bitter marmalade and some milk.

Folding with a metal spoon

After combining all the ingredients to a smooth batter I poured the mixture into a cake tin which had been lined with greaseproof paper and sprayed with cake release spray.

A pointless exercise in smoothing batter. Just give up for Pete's sake.

The oven actually co-operated with me and the cake was baked pretty much according to the recipe – which makes a refreshing change. It emerged from the oven golden and slightly crispier round the edges than it should have been, but a success as far as my cake record is concerned.

The endless smoothing proved pointless..

I then heated some marmalade in the microwave to a bubbling molten goo – be careful, this stuff would eat through your skin and flesh until it reached the bone, at which point it would find tiny chainsaws and powersaw it’s way through – before brushing the cake with the sticky glaze.

I'm surprised it didn't melt the brush

Once I had coated the cake I left it to cool completely.

Top Tip: This cake would make a fabulous fly/wasp catcher in summer months.

SHINY!

This cake calls for a sweet topping to counteract the evil bitterness of the marmalade but that isn’t too rich. This cake is drizzled with a simple runny icing using icing sugar and warm water.

Gorgeous Sticky Marmalade Cake (I'd rather poke my own eyes out that eat it)

After cutting a piece and tasting it, I grudgingly admit that it is a pretty delicious cake for all it’s inherent wrongness. The marmalade in the batter keeps the cake moist and the sugary icing is a delicious contrast to the bitter orange flavour.

Moist and orangy

If you like marmalade, if you like cake, if you fancy making a marmalade cake then why not try this version?

A Cake for a Baby Shower

The baby shower is becoming more and more popular in the UK. I know lots of people are quite sniffy about them, but I think it’s a lovely idea to have a party before your baby arrives and renders you incapable of any conversation other than how sore your nipples are, and the consistency and frequency of poop (and not just the baby’s).

So, I was invited to a baby shower today and I promised to bring a cake.

I decided to avoid the horrors of the “baby” cake, and not just because I don’t have the skill, but also because the thought of hacking into an infant just feels wrong. Waiting until they’re teenagers is much better.

While shopping for the cake ingredients, I happened upon some giant Jazzies…

Giant SNOWIES? Jazzies. They are Giant Jazzies

and decided that these would be the perfect decoration for my cake, invoking childhood for the guests and with the added bonus of having the right pastel colours for a baby shower.

Last night I prepared a chocolate batter (thank you again Hummingbird) and baked 4 cakes in batches.

Top Tip – Get some of this. It is amazing.

Easy Greasing without the buttery fingers.

The kitchen started to look like an assembly line.

Ready to go in the oven, cooling in tin, cooling on cooling rack..It's the CIRCLE of sponge

I used my usual method of checking to see if the sponges had cooked through, which is to push a piece of uncooked spaghetti into the centre of the cake. If the spaghetti comes out completely clean, the cake is ready.

Much better than a skewer as it leaves a teeeeeny hole

Everything was going along in a surprisingly efficient and organised manner. Until I tried to move one of the sponges from one cooling tray to another at which point my brain did a fart and I fumbled. Time slowed down and I watched in horror as the cake fell from my hands onto the counter and BROKE.

ARGH!

Do you have any idea of how annoying it is to be me? Any clue at all? Let me tell you something, it is VERY annoying to be such a consistent idiot.

*sigh*

So we’re down to a three layer cake, and looking on the brightside at least I got to taste the sponge to “make sure it’s OK”.

I left the remaining cakes to cool down completely before putting them in a cake tin (in between layers of greaseproof paper) overnight.

A bit wonky, not completely perfect - I love homemade cakes.

This morning I got up and removed the cakes from their tin, and in a blinding flash I realised that I hadn’t really thought through how I was going to transport the finished article to the party. I toyed with the idea of just putting it on a stand, but the way I drive would surely result in a smashed up cake and buttercream icing all over the EVERYWHERE. So, off I went to the cakeporn shop (God, I love it there so much – they have little pots of ready made icing in every imaginable colour for a start, and sprinkles! SPRINKLES like you couldn’t even begin to think of) and bought a base for the cake – that made me feel quite grown up – a box for the cake and some adorable little ready made icing feet. Yes, you heard. Feet. I also dashed over to the newsagents and bought some regular sized jazzies too.

Look at them liddle feet. AWWW.

Oh! At this point maybe I should point out that the woman who is baking a baby has had a scan and is having a girl, hence the pink feet, they do also sell blue ones (but to be honest, who has blue feet? Apart from me in bed)

I needed a LOT of buttercream icing and plumped for a creamy vanilla flavoured one. I really couldn’t be arsed to sieve 750g of icing and so took the cheats way out and blitzed it quickly in my food processor to get rid of any lumps. (I know that from a purely logical point of view the amount of time saved sieving is eclipsed by the amount of time getting the food processor out, washing it up, drying it, and putting it away, but honestly? I really HATE sieving)

I added the butter to the icing sugar and using a hand held whisk, blended until the mixture had a sand-like texture. Now, I know that this method makes amazing icing (adding liquid later seems to really give the mix a lovely fluffy texture) but Jesus, the MESS!

Icing sugar coats everything in a fine, sweet dust.

And onto assembly. I placed the first sponge onto the base and added a layer of buttercream, followed by the second cake and another layer of icing, and then the final sponge on the top.

Whoa, looking a bit Leaning Tower of Cakesa there.

I then iced the whole cake using a palette knife. A new one, which only bloody works! I think that if I’d owned this my cola cupcakes would have looked better. The trick seems to be to build the icing up rather than bunging it all on and hoping for the best. So I did a “base coat” first and then added more frosting in layers.

Smoooooth

Once the cake was iced I got on with my favourite part, decorating!

I placed the giant jazzies around the edges of the top and added the little feet.

*empty womb*

I pressed the smaller jazzies around the outside of the cake.

LOOK! Honestly, I was so proud of this.

and I was done.

So into the box it went – after making everyone in the house come and have a look. I just about managed to stop myself from dragging people in off the street, that’s how proud I was. And now you get to look at it again.

I love it.

Off I went to the party, which was LOVELY by the way, and I managed to get a quick shot of the cake being cut (I’m going to be honest, I demanded that someone took a photo, like some sort of cakeadonna. I think I got away with it though, as everyone just thought I was a bit eccentric)

A slice

and then the whole thing disappeared in the space of 10 minutes – I shit you not.

So, if you’ve stumbled here via a Search Engine – I URGE you to make this cake – a two layer one would be simpler, obviously, and you can use any combination of sponge and icing you like – everyone liked the jazzies though – so, yeah, Definitely do the jazzie thing.

Triple Layer Coconut Cake with Lemon Filling and Boiled Icing. Sounds Dangerous.

I had a coconut left over from the Totally Tropical Beach Party.

I decided it would be a crying shame to let it go to waste and so off I went to google to find a recipe that used fresh coconut.

I stumbled upon this:http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/fresh-coconut-cake-with-a-lemon-cream-cheese-filling-and-boiled-icing-recipe/index.html  and my saliva glands went into overdrive. I was frothing (and if you’ll read on you’ll see that frothing at the mouth is somewhat of a theme while making this mission of a cake)

So the morning dawned. It was a Sunday, but a special Sunday – It was a bank holiday which means that Sunday is actually Saturday and Saturday is like a Friday, but a Friday that you’ve booked off work.

ANYWAY.

I cracked open the coconut.

YUM!

It was rotten to the core.

That cake though, that sweet, sweet cake had burrowed it’s way into my brain and I was determined to make it. A rotten coconut was not going to beat me. Oh No.

So I went shopping and got some desiccated coconut.

This recipe is HARDCORE. It requires 3 layers of cake. This is a challenge for me as I only own two 8 inch tins, I do have a third tin which just about fits the bill but I was a bit nervous about not using matching tins. Honestly, my naivety at this point is, with hindsight, touching.

I preheated the oven (my oven needs to start at gas mark seven in order to ignite) and got on with creaming the butter and sugar together

That's a half cup of vegetable oil waiting to get into the mix

I continued on with the recipe. Adding flour, oil and buttercream to the mix

Cake Batter.

I then whipped the egg whites into stiff peaks before folding them into the batter (I’m starting to feel slightly pissed off by this point, this is the sort of recipe which requires the use of every single bowl and spoon in the kitchen)

FFS

I folded the egg whites into the batter and poured the mixture into the pre-prepared cake tins. Into the oven they go..

Have you turned down the heat?

I forgot to turn down the heat.

I’M COOKING THESE BABIES AT TWICE THE HEAT THEY SHOULD BE AT.

I didn’t even notice, I was so busy getting on with the next level of madness (the lemon and creamcheese filling) that it was only after about 10 minutes and a really STRONG smell of cake burning cooking that I realised my mistake.

This could have been a very different blog if I had waited even 3 minutes more, but with a quick application of tin foil and a swift reduction of the heat, I managed to salvage the situation. (I might have also said the word FUCKING FUCKKK about 17 times.)

Three is the magic number

I move onto the lemon filling. This goes without incident, and is butter, creamcheese, lemon zest and lemon juice whipped together.

The cakes are cooling and  before I can spread the filling, I have to make the icing.

At this point I realise that I have to make a sugar syrup which is meant to then be whipped into stiffened egg whites. Brilliant. This recipe might as well ask me to conjure a a robot army out of the dirt in my back garden, FOR FUCK’S SAKE. This is also the moment that I realise that NOT reading recipes before embarking upon them can turn me into a snarling, slathering BitchBeast.

"Take your eyes off me for a moment...that's right..glance over there at something for a second...I'm going to BOIL OVER NOW! MWAHAHAHAHA"

After I had cleared up the unbelievably quick-cooling-dries-to-a-crack-glaze-all-over-the-hob sugar syrup and poured it, with fear in my heart, into the whipped egg whites I got on with filling and icing the cake.

The cakes could have done with cooling even more before adding the filling, hence the dripping

The icing is amazing, like a frothy cloud. Desiccated coconut added to decorate.

This cake weighs in at an impressive 955 calories per tenth of an 8 inch diameter cake.

Oh. My. Hips.

Ain't it beautiful though?

And it tasted like eating a coconut and lemon cloud of diabetes coma, ie: delicious.

What can we learn from this post? READ THE RECIPE, you idiot, and if it sounds too much like hard work, it probably is. (but this was totally worth it)

It’s the final countdown…

It’s the party tomorrow.

To say that I am not quite ready for it would be a staggering understatement.

Somehow I have failed to arrange:

1) The Food

2) The cakes

3) The decorations

4) Presents

And I’m at work today.

So.

Yeah.

Pray for me.

I scream, you scream, we all scream for Ice Cream (Cupcakes)

Well, I’m back from my holiday. We did NOT die in plane crash, and although I have returned to the UK slightly crispier than before, this is entirely down to the 40 plus degree heat combined with beer at lunchtime forgetting to put on sunscreen regularly, rather than some sort of fiery fireball.

(I’d like to take this opportunity to thank one of my commenters DillyTante for her comforting words on my last post. Thanks, Dilly. Thanks A LOT)

In Skiathos, I pondered on the cake I would like to make for Oliver’s upcoming Beach/Tropical party (Yes, I am THAT sad) and came to the conclusion that I’d like to make cupcakes which look like ice creams.

So, while going out to restaurants to eat delicious food:

I think I'll pass...

Or watching the sun set over the harbour:

*thinks about cupcakes*

Or just generally hanging out:

WHAT?

The idea grew and grew.

So today I decided to have a trial run. I googled about a bit and found a recipe which actually cooks the cake inside a cornet. Genius! I decided to try a few of the cornet cakes and to also try a traditional cupcake in a case.

I assembled the most important ingredients…

The bananas and plums are there for me to make rude fruit salads for my own amusement. (the chicken likes to watch)

…and got to work. The recipe calls for a pretty standard vanilla cake mixture which should then be distributed between 12 cornets (with flat bases). As this is a trial run I only made four and spooned the rest of the batter into some lovely cases which I bought  from the local CakePorn shop.

Oh! Do you remember when I told you of my vast and unending love of the two local party shops Here ? Well, in news just in…one has closed down due to financial difficulties and the other BURNED DOWN. *gasp*. So I am reduced to driving to a party shop that also specialises in cake decorations and tins and cases and cake stands and and and I’ll be bankrupt by Christmas.

So I prepared the batter and shared it between the cones and the cases.

Note the large amount of batter in the cornets

I baked them for 25 minutes and got on with the buttercream ice cream icing.

Again, I used a standard buttercream recipe consisting of:

250g unsalted butter

600g icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp milk

I also added the second half of a vanilla pod’s seeds (the first half went into the cake batter) and whisked the butter and vanilla together until pale and then added the icing sugar slowly. Adding the sugar slowly made NO FUCKING DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER and I still ended up with a kitchen which wouldn’t have looked out of place in Miss Haversham’s house. I made half of the mixture without colouring paste, and the other half a small smear of “SugarFlair” paste in primrose yellow.

The cakes came out of the oven looking pretty good…

Hmmm

…but as you can see the cakes in the cornets have risen far too high over the edge of the wafer, when I add the icing this is going to cause a problem.

I got on with decorating the cakes, adding icing, flakes and sprinkles to get an idea of what works best.

Looking pretty good

The inside of the cornet

And the traditional cupcakes looked pretty good too..

YUM!

And so onto a taste test..

The cornets, although looking much more authentic as “ice cream” were far, far too sweet (possibly due to the large amount of frosting needed to cover the overspill of cake mixture). They were pronounced “YUCK!” and “TOO MUCH” and ended up..

Make compost, make something good of yourself Ice Cream Cornet Cupcake...become one with the universe.

(they also wouldn’t sit still on my…and I’m embarrassed to confess that I own one..cupcake stand *shame* which will be necessary to make the small fairy cakes into an effective Birthday Cake for the party)

And so we have a winner!

It's an ice cream in cake form...what's not to like?

But I’ve now got 40 cornets to use up and a ridiculous amount of icing sitting in the mixing bowl, malevolently.

And so I knocked up a cone dipped in icing, rolled in hundreds and thousands and filled with Marshmallow, M&M’s and smarties:

Sugar PLUS

And Oliver and Tom pronounced it “Good” and ate it, wafer and all.

And so, to a couple of links for you if you would like to make cakes that look like ice cream.

Ice Cream Cupcake Recipe

Buttercream Icing

And a link to the blog that inspired the cone filled with sweets (actually, this whole blog is filled with wonderful ideas, I would have tried the cupcakes in ice cream pots if only there had been time)

Sugarcoatedbliss

Thank God for trial runs.

A Royal Wedding Party

Union Jack. On a Shoe.

I wasn’t very excited about the recent(ish) Royal Wedding. I wasn’t one of those people saying stuff like “BOO! TAX PAYERS MONEY! BLOODY ARISTROCRACY” or anything, I just couldn’t really summon up much enthusiasm.

That was until we decided to invite my Nana to come and stay for the week.

Suddenly, I was effervescent! YAY! ROYAL WEDDING!

I decided that I was going to bake a cake, we were going to have a “spread” and champagne and watch the coverage on the TV and have some champagne and tie up bunting outside and have some champagne.

YAY!

The cake I decided to bake was from the lovely book by Lorraine Pascale called “Baking Made Easy” which is from her BBC TV series. I really fell a little bit in love with Lorraine while watching her cookery series, and was delighted when I received her book for my birthday (a week before the wedding) There isn’t anything much nicer than a brand new cookery book to flick through, and despite being on a permadiet, I especially love drooling over cake recipes.

Her website is http://www.lorrainepascale.com/ (HOLY SHIT! Did I just make a link? WOW!)

Anyway. The cake I wanted to make is a plain chocolate sponge with inches of buttercream and chocolate cigarillos around the outside. You can fill the top (there’s a gap between the top of the cake and the top of the cigarillos) with anything really…flowers, fruit, sweets…anything, and I decided that I wanted two tone cigarillos, white and milk chocolate and to bring the cake into the patriotic theme, I filled it with fresh strawberries and blueberries.

I made this.

I got the cigarillos from http://www.chocolatetradingco.com/chocolates/ingredients/cigarellos-curls?gclid=COm_pKqnqakCFQNP4Qod1iIHLA (Getting flash now) and they arrived really quickly.

We put bunting up outside the night before the Big Day (and I must confess that it is still hanging forlornly from one end of our down pipe – *SHAME*) and bought in some nice party food from the high street.

We were up early and settled down to watch the coverage – and thoroughly enjoyed it.

By the way did you see this:

I MADE THIS

I made that cake. Pretty amazing, yes?

So, we watched the wedding, popped the champagne when they came out of the church and the crowd roared and…ah. It was lovely.

Ma had actually bought special “Celebration” glasses to drink the champagne from

*cough* IgnoreTheMug *cough*

So, we drank some more champagne when they emerged onto the balcony.

And a little bit more when they kissed

And a little bit more when they kissed again

And we laughed when Prince Phillip clearly went “RIGHT! I’ve had enough of all this, let’s go and eat!” (like Frank off Everybody Loves Raymond) and they all shuffled back inside.

And then I made Nana try on my original 50’s glasses

Champagne makez everfing funneee

And then I had some pink wine (I think)

And we watched Prince William (um, Duke of Cambridge or whatever his name is now) drive the beautiful Kate back home in that car and it was brilliant…and then I had some more wine.

And then I forced the boys outside to take a photo of them and Nana and the bunting

Seriously, this photo is uncomfortable to look at. Sorry Boys!

And then I think we had some more food and we definitely had some more cake. Oh did you see the cake?

Did I mention that I made this cake?

And we had a lovely day and it was great.

(And even though we had to call an ambulance for Nana at 1 O’Clock in the morning because she was very poorly and that bit was really shit, but she’s OK now, it was still a Good Day)

How to Throw a Willy Wonka Party

With all powerful Shed/Playhouse

Man, I’m proud of this photo. Which is why I have made it super ginormous. LOOK! at the colour of the sky! LOOK! at the way the purple and orange balloons dance in the gentle breeze! LOOK! at how green and soft the lawn looks! LOOK! at the subtle little touches of Wonka!

LOOK AT IT!

Right, if you’ve looked hard enough and been slack jawed in amazement *threatens* then I will continue.

For Oliver’s 9th birthday I we decided on a Willy Wonka theme. Hey, the kids are going to be mainlining sugar for 2 hours anyway, why not be up front about that?

I think this was one of my more successful attempts at building memories *bokes up ring* but whenever I ask the kids which their favourite party ever has been they say “The last one” so..*shrugs* (INGRATES!)

Lets start with the invites. I wanted to give each child a Wonka chocolate bar with a golden ticket inside. The golden ticket would be the invitation. How popular I was with the parents’ of the invitees is debatable (bearing in mind that a few christmases before I had held a christmas party and given chocolate filled advent calendars out as invites. Still let’s gloss over that point) as the chocolate bars I ordered from the internet were pretty big. I got some shiny gold paper and formulated my words:

GOLDEN TICKET

 Greetings to you, the lucky finder of this golden ticket! You are invited to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory  to celebrate Oliver’s 9^th Birthday!

 Willy Wonka has temporarily moved his operations to: <insert address>

 Present this ticket at <time> on <Date> for a 2 hour trip around the factory.

 Please contact the factory to let us know if you are able to attend.

 Customer Services Number – <Landline>

  Willy Wonka’s Secretary (can accept texts) – <mobile>

 <In the teeniest writing you can get to still look legible> (Please be advised that Willy Wonka, His Factory or his staff cannot be held responsible for any naughty children being turned into blueberries/sucked up pipes/turned into tiny tiny people etc)

Oh Yeah. These chocolate bars contain many grams of madness

I teased open the end of each chocolate bar and sprinkled poison inside…no. No, I didn’t, I just slipped the golden ticket inside each bar.

Decorations

OK, I will hold my hands up here and admit that I spent a small fortune on the decorations for this party. Hey it was 2009, times were good. This was back when petrol didn’t make one fall to one’s knees on Esso forecourts screaming at the sky. Back when a belt full of shopping in Sainsbury’s didn’t make you blanche and drool when the total of a few pieces of meat, a loaf of bread and some fruit bleeped in your face. Back when a family of four could go out for a meal without having to first secure a small loan and/or sell their car. Back then.  *sigh*  Anyway, I digress.

I bought a bunch of candy canes and giant lollipops and stuck them in the ground in the garden, and hung them from trees. I attached bunting to the shed/playhouse and arranged helium filled balloons around.

Lollipops are growing straight out of the ground! Mad eh?

It's like CHRISTMAS...In August..WTF?

God I love the Shed/Playhouse.

                                                                                                        

I didn’t stop there. Oh NO. I also bought a huge banner with Oliver’s enormous FACE on it and stuck it on the front of the house.

My Son’s huge face is staring at YOU stranger.

The day of the party arrived and I went into actual panic mode. I decided that the shed/playhouse needed to be prettied up INSIDE as well. Cos y’know? The inside of a shed is really, like, IMPORTANT. So I sent Tom round to the party porn shop around the corner. (Yes. I live literally 3 minutes away from 2 party shops. I sometimes wonder if the proximity to such caverns of delight and joy have made my party planning addiction worse…and then I feel sad…so I go and have a look around the party shop and feel magically better. SHUT UP!)

Tom came home with more bunting and another bunch of orange and purple balloons, and we transformed the inside of the Shed/Playhouse into…TA DA!

I am aware it is just the inside of a shed. I’m not bloody stupid.

By now, I was pretty much spent on the decoration front. Luckily for me I didn’t have to worry too much about arranging games as we had hired an entertainer. He arrived wearing the sort of clothes only a children’s entertainer will…although I kind of got the feeling that this man would have been wearing his red waistcoat, yellow shirt and spotty trousers out to a nightclub. If you know what I mean.

Anyway, he was great, the kids were in the shed for an hour, playing quizzes and having dancing competitions and apparently some sort of bubble frenzy engulfed them all. What is it with kids and bubbles?

BUBBLES! BUBBLES! OMG! BUBBBBBBLLLLESSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!

So while they all went nuts in the garden and sweated themselves into small puddles of bubble liquid joy, I got on with the food.

Food

SO, I just went for it really. I threw all my concerns about healthy choices into a great steaming stew of caramelised sugar and just provided the kids with a smorgasbord of unadulterated crap. I got the chocolate fountain out, and made a platter of marshmallows and strawberries (They’re healthy right? I mean, I know they’re about to be dunked in pure liquid chocolate – actually, it’s not pure at all is it? Vegetable oil? GROSS), crisps, pizza and the usual rubbish was supplemented with extra biscuits and cakes.  I mean, just look at it (those with diabetes should look away now) :

98% non nutritional (the watermelon is the 2%)

The Parachute

So, after the kids were really hopping, I thought I’d better get them to run a little bit of the sugar off. One of my good friends runs exercise classes for kids, and she had brought a parachute along. So we had a half an hour of playing with it. I love this photo. It’s so colourful and we look like we’re all really enjoying ourselves…and that’s what it’s all about really…

There is a child inside that parachute. A child spinning around like a dervish.

And so onto the cake.

I found this amazing woman on the internetz who makes “cakes” made entirely of sweets. You can find her here –  http://partysticks.co.uk/cakelesscakes/ (Uh, sorry but I haven’t worked out links yet)

She provided me with the most fabulous “cake” in the shape of a number 9

The salad next to it...*ahem*

And the truly genius part of this sort of “cake” is that it can go into the party bags as just a bunch of sweets. YAY!

The inevitable sugar crash has already begun for some.

So, we sang happy birthday, and the kids went home. It really was a terrific party. And I managed not to drink any wine until the last child departed. GO ME! I was, however completely knackered.

Meltdown.

The Pirate Party otherwise known as TOTES AWESOME PARTY

I will kill you with this machete. I'm not joking. I will kill you in the face.

Ah. The pirate party. Is there a male child alive who hasn’t wanted a Pirate Party at some point in their childhood?

*hides Oliver’s hand shooting into the sky*

It’s actually a pretty easy theme to do – Lots of eye patches and skull and crossbones and you’re golden.

Invites

Download a treasure map – something like

And print them out. Now for the wordz…

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Captain <insert name> has docked ship at <insert address> and is looking for jolly buccaneers to join his crew of swash buckling pirates!

Captain <insert name> will be interviewing all candidates on <date of party> at <time of party>

No land lubbers or lily livered cowards need apply.

Pirate dress essential (obviously don’t worry about this if you’re not going for a fancy dress thing, but I have to be honest the kids love it)

Let the captain know if you’ll be turning up for fun and dastardly deeds by:

Text <mobile number>

Phone<phone number>

Remember! If anyone asks you why you are a pirates? Just tell them

“Because we ARRRRR!”

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

OK – now print this out onto the back of your treasure maps. Roll into scrolls and…well, I hesitate to tell you this, but I actually sealed them with some red candle wax. Oh yeah. I am that obsessive…but you could just tie them up with a little red ribbon, or a piece of string – or anything really. For older children, you could collect those small plastic Coke (other pops are available) bottles, remove the labels and place the scrolls into the bottles. Actually, fuck yeah, that’s a great idea – why didn’t I do that?

Now, I have always tried to have a good mix of both genders at our parties – and while I appreciate that there are little girls who are quite happy to dress as pirates, I am also aware that there are those who would much prefer to dress as a princess or something more girly. It’s easy to get by this by adding the magic words “Mermaids” and “Tinkerbell fairies” into the invite.

Decorations

Camp Pirate

As you can see, I went down the cheapest route possible. I got the boys dressed up in their outfits a week before the party and took a bundle of pictures. I then fiddled about with them a bit on potatoshop and printed them out.

I turned some into “Wanted” posters (using the crime of “Theft on the Seven Seas” and all that jazz) and left some alone and stuck them up all over the house and Shed/Playhouse.

It is possible to buy pirate themed decorations from most party shops, but they can be expensive pieces of tat. It’s a great place to find ideas though and it’s definitely worth having a look around and seeing if you can make something similar at home.

A Skull and Crossbone flag can be easily made with some black fabric and white paint – and let’s be honest here – this is a kids party, they really wont’t be looking too closely at the decorations anyway!

Black, white and red ballons look great clustered together.

The nautical theme can be expanded upon to great effect without too much outlay. A big knot of rope and pieces of driftwood (uh, I realise I’m talking utter shit here with the “driftwood” bollocks, but hey! *shrug* you might live near the sea) can be left by the front door as a sign of things to come.

If you have some girly girls coming, remember to include some pictures of mermaids (again just download them and print them out) and fairies. I remember buying a bag full of shells and shit from Wilkinson’s weird bathroom section for a few pounds – I scattered these around as well. If you have such items in your bathroom as a matter of course, then they might as well be useful rather than just sitting in a bow on top of the toilet gathering dust and smell.

One thing I always do is a welcome note on the front door. I must admit that this pirate party was thrown in around 2007 and I have lost all of my original artwork and poems in the great changeover from crappy PC to Mac, but if I remember correctly the front door notice went something like this:

BEWARE!

ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

ALL WEAPONS TO BE LEFT AT THE FRONT DOOR

ANY WOODEN LEGS AND HOOK HANDS MUST BE EXAMINED BY FIRST MATE <INSERT NAME OF MUM>

KNOCK ON THIS DOOR ONLY IF YOU ARE READY TO JOIN CAPTAIN <INSERT NAME>’S SALTY CREW

Anyway – I think there was probably a poem or something (I like writing poetry) but it is lost to me now. *weeps bitter Mac tears* *remembers I now have a lovely shiny Mac* *Cheers up*

Food

Oh the food part is a piece of piss! Just make ordinary party food and…here is the genius part…make labels out of cocktail sticks and printed pieces of paper to magically turn your run of the mill, ordinary food into AMAZING PIRATE/MERMAID vittels. Pah! Kids eh? Aren’t they thick?

Some ideas:

Cheesy Balls (c’mon you know what I’m talking about – either those vile spherical wotsits or…if you are quite mental…those chicken ball things with the. ick. cheese stuff inside) – “Cannon Balls”

Sandwiches – “Buried Treasure”

Pizza – “Captain Hook’s Delight”

You get the idea. Try not to get too bogged down with the food – by their very nature, Pirate Parties are generally for quite young children, and you can scrape by with very little effort on the food front.

Games

Treasure hunt.

Buy each attending gift a small gift (I’m thinking something from the pound shop, or a chocolate bar) wrap each gift in different wrapping paper. This is great for using up all those scraps of Christmas paper or old birthday wrapping that are just too small to use (am I the only person who keeps this shit? please tell me I’m not). Hide the gifts around the house/garden before the children arrive and then give each child a scrap of “their” wrapping paper and send them on their hunt. This is a terrific way to use up time start the party as it can be played by the early arrivers while they wait for the late stragglers. Of course, if you can’t be arsed then you can do a pretty good treasure hunt with chocolate gold coins.

Captain Says.

Simon says with a pirate twist. Yeah. It’s the usual game but with “Captain” instead of “Simon”. Lazy party? nahhhhh.

Musical Islands

Musical chairs but instead of chairs use large pieces of paper.

Peg Leg Races

A three legged race. Pair the children up and tie them up…wait until their parent’s pick them up

Jesus, mother. Enough already.

Cake

Well, I actually bought a pirate ship cake tin from a local cake porn shop. Oh, you should see it. It has sails and everything. So..a couple of days before the party I prepare the cake batter, I decided to go for something quite dense using buttermilk, and as I poured the batter into the well oiled tin I felt true pride. Pride and a little bit starry eyed  – “Oh” I imagined to myself “I might be the next Jane Asher”

Well. I might be the next Jane Asher, if the real Jane Asher makes cakes that are actual lumps of shit. Oh Lord it was pitiful. It was just a lump of cake. Who in their right mind would like a lump of cake to celebrate their birthday?

So, I covered the LumpOCake in green icing,stuck a couple of pirate figures and a palm tree in the top, rolled a bunch of blue icing onto a cake board  and called it a treasure island (*points at head* Up here for thinking)

In conclusion I would advise you to buy a cake from Asda.

The End

Oliver, Tom and his friends had a brilliant time. The party was a great success. If you’re throwing a Pirate Party soon I wish you all the best and urge you to not start drinking the wine until the final child has been collected.