Since we did a family party for Tyler's birthday, we did a friend birthday for Kaitlyn. We told her that she could invite 4 friends since she was turning 4 years old. She said she wanted to "go to the jumping place" and "do make pops". Not too tricky.
Of course, we had a few mishaps. Two of the guests were too sick to come, so it ended up just being my family, Cody and his mommy, and Lily, who came a half an hour late. And since we went on a Saturday when the jumping place is more crowded, there were a few extra tears when bigger kids bounced next to my littles and sent them flying. But Kaitlyn was determined to still have a great time.
The funny thing was that, at first, my kids didn't even want to jump very much. They were mostly interested in carrying foam blocks from the foam pit around and making towers (sometimes on trampolines, which meant they didn't last long.)
Once we were done jumping, we headed back into one of their party rooms to make Cake Pops. If you haven't seen this trend online, basically they are little balls of cake on a stick. The special pans have you bake cake in the sphere shape, but the "true" cake pops are made by baking a regular cake, breaking it into crumbs, mixing in enough frosting to make it moldable, and then shaping that into little balls to freeze and dip in "chocolate", or those melting discs in the candy molding aisle.
I thought about making them for the kids, but I knew they would really enjoy putting the sprinkles and cookie crumbs and such on the outside. The instructions said to have them frozen and take them out of the freezer for 15 minutes before dipping. Since we were jumping for an hour, I figured that keeping them out in the cold car would balance that out.
Wrong.
Each kid got a few cake pops that worked, but a majority of them were too warm and soft and just fell off the sticks. The good news is that I don't think they cared. It was a sugar creation, they got to decorate them, and when they fell apart they got to eat them. Christopher can make fun of me all he wants, I still think it worked out fine.
Tyler had his own technique for eating them.
And I was rather happy with a lot of my preparations. I got a little tin and glued a foam egg on top for each kid to decorate with stickers and stick their cake pops in to dry. And they loved having all the sprinkles and stuff in a little muffin tin to decorate. At first I was worried about how I was going to melt the chocolate, since all the online instructions involved a microwave or double boiler I wouldn't have in the rented party room, but I dug up our old fondue pot and that worked perfectly. If I had managed to keep them frozen and remembered the lighter so we could sing to Kaitlyn, it would have been perfect.
Just to redeem myself, I made the rest up that night the right way.
They are really cute, but I have to say - I'm not a fan of the taste. Mixing baked cake and frosting together basically tastes like . . . soggy cake. With the coating on the outside, it packs a big sugar wallop. A lot of people seem to love them though.
We did get to sing to Kaitlyn the next night though. We went up to my Aunt and Uncle's house, and they sang to all of us. But Tyler tried to blow out that candle from the second it was lit, giggling all the way. Stinker.
No comments:
Post a Comment