Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

On Saturday, I put on a cupcake decorating 8-year old’s birthday party, with eight little girls. And me and one nanny and the birthday girl’s mom & dad. It was a lot of fun. I made a double batch of yellow cupcakes – it was the batter that ate New York – it should have been about 3 dozen and was actually 3 dozen plus almost a whole pan (20 out of 24) of mini-cupcakes. I didn’t have quite enough baking powder and so I put in a little soda, and that was a mistake – there were some funny overflows – but since I had so much, I had 27 good cupcakes for the kids to decorate – 3+ per girl – plus the not quite perfect, slightly exploded, extras for my household to eat.

I splurged and ordered these two  cupcake books overnighted from Amazon: Hello, Cupcake &  What’s New Cupcake? (recommended by Dorrie Greenspan) – totally cute ideas, but almost all the decorations are candy, and I knew the kids would just eat it.

Hello, Cupcake has the cupcake garden idea – dip frosted cupcakes into crushed Oreo dirt and then decorate with lettuces, radishes, carrots and peas. Marzipan vegetables would be more traditional; instead, they use all kinds of candy ingeniously to make the veggies. Jolly Rancher, Starburst & Airhead fruit chews, M&Ms, green licorice laces (pea vines). I especially like the lettuce – cornflakes coated with green icing, arranged around a little ball of green Jolly Rancher on top of the dirt-covered cupcake. And of course, in the book, the cupcakes are arranged in neat rows. They even have plans for end of the row signs, the seed packs that say what vegetable is where – frosted graham crackers on pretzel sticks glued on with chocolate. Martha’s got a carrot cake with a marzipan vegetable garden on top – it was published back when my kids were about 8 & 9, and we were always going to make it – John and I both love marzipan – but we just never did. This candy version we might’ve accomplished.

I provided yogurt raisons, gummy worms, teddy grahams, dried papaya stick carrots, banana chips, coconut, and toasted pea crisps. I forgot to bring the mint I bought at the farmers’ market for leafs, but the birthday girl’s family brought a big bunch from home. The kids’ garden came out a little messier than the book – looking at the cupcakes the dad said, “That’s what I love about you kids – no holding back – whatever we’ve got goes on the cupcake”.

I was going to start by having us make Farm Cakes – they’d have baked while we decorated and the kids could’ve taken them home – but it seemed like too much for one party. We mixed up two flavors of icing: chocolate sour cream & strawberry drizzle – decorated, ate, and opened presents. There was maybe a 15 minutes span when we needed something to do, and the dad started a game of Twister. Oh, and the birthday girl was completely surprised!