Last month was Irini's 5th birthday, and she has been thinking about it for months, insisting on a Rainbow Dash My Little Pony party. When I sat down to plan it out, I was so relieved that Rainbow Dash was her favourite pony, since that opened up all the rainbow inspiration out there! This year we had a lot of kids, so we hired a community hall, which meant that we didn't have that long to set up, and it needed to pack up quickly as well. I kept the decorations pretty simple, focusing on Rainbow Dash's colours, so lots and lots of pastel rainbow colours with punches of pink and turquoise.
The kids table was set up with rainbow balloon topiaries; we hung pink, lime and turquoise tissue paper puffs and paper lanterns from the ceiling; and we had huge rainbow balloon bouquets (made by my dad!) around the room. Most of the party supplies came from either Spotlight or Pink Frosting. Finding MLP-type colours was surprisingly easy!
I tried to rainbow theme as much of the food as possible. The rainbow jellies were a huge hit, and were super easy to make, just somewhat time consuming letting each layer set. I thought the Rainbow Dash cookies came out looking great, and they were delicious, but I think the blue-green colour put off a lot of the kids - I only saw adults eating them, and once they had one, it was hard to stop. The rainbow choc chip cookies were a cheat - ready made dough from the supermarket - but were much more popular with the littlies! The rainbow cupcakes did not come out as I envisioned, and literally turned the kids' mouths deep purple, but not one was left at the end of the party. The toppers were printables from this etsy seller, as did the food tags, and really helped to make the party a Rainbow Dash party rather than just a rainbow party.
What is an Aussie birthday party without chocolate crackles?! I loved these as a kid, and it looked like most of the parents did, too, since I saw a lot of them sneaking them off their kids plates. To fit the Rainbow Dash theme, I mixed in rainbow candy coated choc chips. I also tried my hand at cake pops and they came out great! They were super delicious, and were much easier to make than I expected. If you haven't made them before, then I highly recommend having a go.
Finally, the piece-de-resistance, the Rainbow Dash Birthday Cake. I had been given pretty explicit directions - it had to be Rainbow Dash blue, and it needed flowers, a rainbow and clouds. I was originally going to make a rainbow layer cake, but I honestly ran out of time, so I harked back to old fashioned marble cakes, and mixed up batches of cake mix with the colours, randomly dropped the mixtures into the pans, then swirled with a skewer. It looked great, and tasted even better - I now only use the vanilla and chocolate cake recipes that I found via Angry Chicken, adapted for my Thermomix; they literally take less than 5 minutes to mix up (maybe even less than 3!), turn out every single time, and are so moist and tasty I am always being asked for the recipes. Seriously, switch to this cake!!
And with that, my little girl was another year older...
Labels: children, food, lifestyle, parties