Happy 6th Birthday Grayson!

Our littlest monkey turned 6 this week, and since he is currently obsessed with Super Mario, naturally he needed a Super Mario Party. 6 year old me squealed with glee.

The Cake

I used fondant on this cake. Whaaaaat?!?!?! Yes, fondant. I could have made the details in Buttercream, but it would have been more difficult, and not as clean, just to prove that I could.

I chose not to give myself any extra work (since I realised that I would have to hand cut the cookies AND the icing to go on them(and did I mention the HAND cut name *sob*), so I grabbed some Fondtastic fondant.

I have used their fondant for cookies before, and even though I don’t use fondant very often, I can easily say its my favourite fondant.

Now the cake itself was Dark Chocolate Mudcake, with Basic Chocolate Buttercream inside. And would you believe, the cake was the only part I had trouble with.

For the sake of design, but not to kill us with cake, I decided to use a styrofoam tier for the bottom. No dramas, done it a million times. For reasons best known only to myself, instead of using my sturdy, never fail dummy holder to ice the cake, I chose to ice it directly on the board. It was covering more ground than the Google Earth car.

It didn’t end there, I stabbed the actual cake with my fingers, not once, not twice, but 3 times, and dented it stacking the cake. Winning SO hard.

The thing is, people kinda expect me of all people to get perfect results with Buttercream (I expect me to also!) so to mangle my particular skill area, was causing me no small amount of stress.

To the rescue, some kitchen paper towel, many many curse words, and the sounds knowledge that my 6 year old won’t give a rats pajamas, and his opinion is the most important in this case.

Some how the cake turned out, not exactly as I hoped, but Grayson was stoked, and that’s all that matters.

The Cookies

Not going to lie, I’m SUPER impressed with these cookies. I hand cut the cookies, using my Chocolate Sugar Cookie recipe, and hand cut the fondant to ice them. I had SO much fun making these, it made up for the drama that was the cake!

Banana Barrels

You’re probably thinking, that looks a lot like the Chocolate coated Bananas from the last party? Yes, that is correct.

The trick to party food, is thinking of a name for the stuff they already want, that suits the theme, without having to invent anything new. #parentinghack

Chocolate Spiders

The perennial favourite. Dry fried noodles, with a mix of Dark Chocolate and Peanut Butter.

I think they taste gross, but I am outnumbered by all of my boys, big and small.

Plus they take about 2 minutes to make. Winning again.

Fairy Flower Bread

I got creative. After being mildly lazy (its the end of the school holidays man!) with the other snacks, I tried to make the Fairy bread a little ‘extra’.

I cut out the petals using a petal cutter, and a round cutter for the centre. A little fondant for a stem and boom, a Super Mario Flower (work with me here).