Suddenly my little backyard birthday party has almost 40 guests!
It's time for a reality check. This is a 5 year old's party.
I don't know why I thought I could get away with a few homemade cupcakes and a game or two. After all, its not the 1970s anymore. I guess even my budget was "retro". I love this YouTube 70s birthday party clip. This was what I mentally had in mind - very Brady Bunch. For that era this was probably a lavish party: they had themed plates & cups and a bakery cake. My mom baked all of our cakes and we ate off of plain white paper plates as far as I remember.
We've been to several spectacular birthday parties this month - one with pony rides and a petting zoo! Another hired a costumed character to entertain and rented an inflatable bounce house. I am having the kids play simple party games. I'm not interested in "keeping up" with anybody but I do realize that with kids come adults and siblings, all of whom need to eat at least a little something. When one of us goes to a party with Danielle we want to have a snack, some cake, a cold drink...
I still want to keep the food simple. I have to deal with a number of food allergies- dairy, gluten, egg & soy as well as one diabetic child and one vegetarian! In a weird way the food allergies are a blessing. Instead of having to provide a full meal we'll serve snacks: Ian's turkey corn dog nuggets and regular corn dogs, potato chips, veggies and dip, as well as individual bags of cotton candy and popcorn. The little bags work out great for the kids, but cotton candy was expensive at nearly $1/bag. I'll make large batches of popcorn on the stove so the house will be filled with the scent of fresh, hot popcorn. I had lollipops left over from my birthday party a few months ago. Since candy stays fresh for 6 months I'll be able to set them out again for Danielle's party -add two gumballs machines from Dollar Tree and I have a buffet.
Then there's the birthday cake controversy. Danielle asked for cupcakes and that is something I can easily do at home. A dear friend taught me that frosting makes excellent spackle when your cakes lean and kids love it.
I'll bake egg free vanilla cupcakes (recipe follows). I had several failed attempts before I realized that gluten free, sugar free and egg free cupcakes were an impossibility for someone with my culinary ability. See the photo...this is NOT the final batch based on the recipe I've included, I promise! I bought a few gluten free cupcakes from Whole Foods after this disaster.
I purchased 4 frozen gluten free cupcakes for less than the cost of the ingredients to bake my own. I've got cute circus animal cupcake toppers (leftover from a previous party) to insert in these to differentiate them from the others. I figure that the kids will never know who is eating the allergy-free cupcakes once they all have one on their plates.
While I am having fun making and baking things for the party I can see how this could easily get out of control. Somebody stop me!
Egg-Free (Vegan) Vanilla Cupcakes*
• 1/2 cup butter (or coconut oil)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1 1/2 cups milk (or almond milk)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 3 cups cake flour
Preheat oven to 350. Sift dry ingredients together, set aside. In mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla to the measured out milk and add milk and flour in alternate batches beginning and ending with the flour. After ingredients are combined beat for about 1 minute on medium speed. Fill cupcake liners about 2/3 full and bake for approx. 20 minutes until centers are set and toothpick comes out clean.
* make this recipe sugar-free by using Splenda for Baking instead of sugar.
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