Birthday Extravaganza

Birthday Extravaganza

So Allison’s birthday is 12/20/07… 5 days before Christmas. I always have this fear that her birthday is going to become horribly overshadowed by Christmas so I have tried to go all out. This is the first year that she is old enough to really have her friends from school involved and have a big, all inclusive party. We decided to do a party at Bounce U, for you who don’t know it’s an indoor bounce arena where there are 2 different rooms with huge inflatables that all the kids can run around and bounce in. They got to bounce for 1.5 hrs, and then we had 45 minutes in the “party room” for lunch, cake and presents.  We invited her entire class from school (all 23 kids) all my co-residents, and a few of our friends who had kids. We had about 20 kids and their parents show up so it was a packed house. It was a Beauty and the Beast themed party as that is Allison’s favorite Disney movie and Belle is her favorite princess. She is completely obsessed with Belle.  To complete the theme, she wore her Belle dress and crown she got from the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique at Disney World and I made the most elaborate princess castle cake I have ever attempted….

Her invitation

I researched different cakes online didn’t find exactly what I wanted but found one that was close. I knew I could make the majority of the castle from a tiered cake then add on towers. Decided that it must be impressive so went with a 3 tiered cake, 12 in round, 9 in round and 6 in round. I stacked them off-set to leave room for the towers. The towers I made out of rice krispy treats. These were a bit fickle…. My first go round did not go so well because they must be very firmly packed or else they just fall apart and the small towers I did not have anything to mold them into. The big towers I molded into bread pans then carved into ovals with a bread knife. I finally remembered a random episode of cake boss or some other baking show I have watched and decided to stack rounds. So I firmly packed rice krispy treats into a sheet cake pan and used a small round cookie cutter to cut out rounds and stack them, 8 high per tower. I skewered them with kabob skewers to secure them and then frosted them with butter cream.  The tops of the large front towers were hand cut out of the pressed treats from the sheet cake pan.  All the rice krispy treats were cut, iced with butter cream and put in the fridge to harden and cool. Then the next night everything was covered with fondant.

I assumed that all the kids would prefer vanilla cake so I made the base cake (12 in round) vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. 4 layers of cake, 3 layers of buttercream, iced with the same buttercream then chilled in the fridge for several hours then covered with fondant. So turns out all the chillin wanted chocolate cake (I was lucky that we had enough!) My 9 in round, middle tier, was a chocolate sour cream cake with a semi-sweet chocolate buttercream icing. Again, 4 layers with 3 layers of buttercream and iced with buttercream, chilled, covered with fondant. The top 6 in round (which was about to be the death of me as the small rounds are very difficult to cover with fondant) was alternating chocolate cake, vanilla cake, chocolate cake, vanilla cake, with vanilla buttercream between each layer, iced with vanilla buttercream, chilled and covered with fondant.

For the decorations I dyed my white fondant a light brown, hand cut 3 large doors, added some details that looked like wood boards and attached them to the front of the 2 large towers and the front of the base cake. I then squished a small round cookie cutter to an oval shape and cut out about 30 of them out of the brown fondant and attached them to the towers and layers of cake.

All the deconstructed pieces, covered and decorated.

For the tops of the towers I used modeling chocolate… let me just tell you how difficult it was to find modeling chocolate in Harrisburg, PA! Luckily my AMAZING husband found a Williams Sonoma that had just gotten some in the day prior! So I used the modeling chocolate and molded the tops of each tower. I also used the “white” modeling chocolate to mold the tops of the large towers.

I think that smile says it all.

This was definitely the biggest/most time consuming/most technically difficult cake I have done yet but it was fun in the end and Allison was amazed and so very excited about it. It was totally worth all the effort seeing her face when she saw it!



Getting ready to blow out her candles.



Goat Cheese Risotto

By popular demand:

Goat Cheese Risotto

2 cups short grain white rice

6-7 cups chicken stock (or broth)

2 teaspoons dried thyme leaves

1 teaspoon dried basil, crushed

Salt and pepper to taste

3-4 large garlic cloves finely chopped

2-3 oz good quality goat cheese

Add rice to non-stick pot and turn on medium heat to toast. Make sure your pot is large enough, your rice will about double in size. I like my rice to get to a nice golden brown… gives it a nice toasty, almost nutty flavor. In another sauce pan add your chicken stock, thyme leaves, basil, salt pepper, and garlic and turn on low heat to keep warm. After rice is toasted add 1-1.5 cups of stock into pan with rice and stir several times. Cover and let sit stirring occasionally until stock is absorbed. When almost completely absorbed add another cup of stock and stir occasionally until stock is almost absorbed. Repeat process until almost all the stock is added to rice, rice is soft and creamy. When rice is cooked you can add your goat cheese to your rice mixture and let it melt. Start with 2 oz and add as you see fit. I love the taste of goat cheese so I ended up adding about 4 oz, but you may not want that strong of a flavor. You may need to add a little more salt/pepper to taste at the end. Remember to taste everything as you cook. If you aren’t  tasting nothing will turn out well in the end.

PS: Things have been pretty crazy recently and I haven't been very good about posting updates and recipes. I will put a big birthday update for the castle cake from Allison's birthday party soon. I did take a few pictures of construction as I went so you can see my process. I also am planning a big Christmas dinner that I will post the recipes from afterwards too!