Happy Birthday Mr 2!xoxo

Apologies for the vast number of weeks between posts!!!

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It's been party central around here with both of my boys having birthdays and little parties.  I'm sure you can imagine I've been having fun!!!! :-)

Mr 2 was first.  My little Babycakes.  What a funny little person he is! Just adorable and cheeky and adventurous and extremely entertaining. And he LOVES cake!!! Which we only discovered when he turned 2.  There's been a lot of cake around here over the past few weeks!

I decided to reuse the pom poms and bunting decorations from his 1st birthday party.  I'm still obsessed with yellow and grey and I'm happy to reuse the decorations after putting a lot of time in to making them. This batch has now done 3 birthday parties and the play room *may* have had the decorations up for an entire year!!!!

It was only a small party but I knew I had a bigger party only a few weeks later for Mr 4, so I decided to make a lot of the food ahead and in bulk and freeze it. This turned out to be extremely handy as the day before Mr 2's party, he fell sick and we had to reschedule for the following week. I was very happy to not have any wasted food as it was all still safe and sound in the freezer and the fresh food hadn't yet been prepared!

Menu:

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Mini pizzas - margarita and roasted pumpkin.

Pizza dough recipe from here.  I LOVE semolina in my pizza bases.  The sugo was basically pureed tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic and a splash of red wine vinegar and salt and pepper.  The pumpkin was simply sliced and roasted with olive oil and salt and pepper.

They freeze wonderfully and I made about 100 mini pizzas to cater for both parties as well as some other sizes for our dinner and some individual ones for Mr 4's lunchboxes.

Green cheese rolls.
Basically using up an abundance of silverbeet from our garden!!! Mr 2's favourite form of vegetable.  It's similar to the recipe in this post, but without the ricotta. Recipe to follow next week hopefully!!!  These also freeze really well and make for fab lunchbox food. I made a huge batch of teeny tiny ones to cater for both parties.

Zucchini pancakes/fritters.
I made these the day before but you can definitely make them ahead and freeze them.  I used the recipe from this post for the kids and for the adults I added lemon zest, salt, pepper and mint and served them hot with some sour cream and chives on top.

Watermelon star pops.
My friend Claire put me on to these a couple of years ago and I make them regularly! There could not be an easier or cuter way of serving fruit!! I love that you can make it ahead. Mr 4 had fun helping me make them.  Served on a piece of foam wrapped in tissue paper.  I forgot to put these out on the food table but they ended up being a great palate cleanser for the kids after cake!!!

Strawberry cups.

Puffed corn cups.

Lemon water bottles.

Thank you gifts.
A simple balloon on a stick and some jelly play dough. The recipe for play dough was adapted from the the lovely Cat's recipe which you will find here (I swapped out the vinegar for cream of tartar.)  Jars were recycled ones I already had.

Cake.
I LOVE this cake. It was really simple to make and the kids loved it.  The design is from the Donna Hay Kids Magazine from this year. I actually used my mum's trusty chocolate cake recipe and instead of the chocolate ganache for the icing, I used Donna's amazing butter cream frosting.  But the concept was the same.

And the most important part of the day - Mr 2 had a ball!!!! He was such a funny birthday boy and ended up with a chocolate butter cream beard from blowing his candles out.  It was a very small gathering, but a lovely little celebration for my amazing boy.  I love you babycakes!!!!



Love Amy xoxo