Teddy Bears Picnic Party - Part 3, Cake and Favour

This week I've been sharing all the fun we served for Honey's first birthday party. Here are the links if you'd like to check out our Savoury and Sweet posts. I saved the best for last - CAKE!

I am so very pleased with how her party cake turned out! Two small round vanilla sponges for the head and body, a few lines of Nutella and some Maltesers to decorate. Muffins for the paws and ears and a couple of snake lollies for the antennae. I had to add a couple of choc drop bumble bees too, just because :-) You can see more detail about the them in the Sweet post.

I think the larger cake rounds made a real difference from our practice run which we used for her actual birthday. This one was made with muffin and mini-muffin size chocolate cakes, because it's not a birthday without Grandma's chocolate cake ;-)

Iced with chocolate icing and decorated with marshmallows, mini marshmallows and FooDoodler.

But I didn't let her have the whole cake - Honey got a muffin.

And because I haven't shared them before, these are the cakes I made for Miss M's first birthday and her party.

Store bought slab cake with icing and green coconut, decorated with tiny teddies and some goodies from my craft supply cupboard. Perfect for our party at the park, well away from home.

The large round cake was our family cake for her actual birthday. Muffins, marshmallows, smarties and chocolate covered snake for decoration.

Then she had a muffin decorated with mini muffins, smarties, and half a chocolate covered snake.

I also loved the little favour boxes we made up. These came yellow and white striped, but a little Nikko/Texta soon helped to bring them up to speed with our theme. Some googley eyes stuck on with mounting tape for a face and a Hershey's Kiss for a sting. Completed with some black and yellow ribbon for wings. Perfect for little hands.

Inside each box there were a few balloons, a party blow-out and a small bottle of bubbles. There's not much more one year olds wish for in life, is there?

Admittedly my bumble bee bubbles weren't quite as cute as their Pinspiration, found here, but I still think they turned out great.

And Miss M had a great time helping out too :-)



Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Teddy Bears Picnic Party - Part 2, Sweet

Earlier this week I shared the savoury snacks from Honey's first birthday party.  Welcome to part two of the series where you can see some of the sweet treats that were on offer.

Last week I shared my practice run for these cute little teddy bear paw cakes.

I stuck with crown biscuits and Maltesers for the large paw and choc melts with choc drops for the small paws. The bear muffin cases I picked up from the local $2 shop.

I had some cute bumble bee muffin cases in my silicon stash, too. Using a small sauce dispenser I drew some Nutella lines onto the cake batter before baking.

I think they turned out quite cute, don't you?

I also added the decorations while the cakes were still warm and fresh from the oven, meaning I didn't have to add icing, cutting down on sugar which is always a good thing when there are little ones involved.

I was also rather happy with these little Milk Arrowroot bumble bees. Held together with a smear of butter and then decorated with butter and Nutella or Vegemite. Served in flower muffin cases.

But I think my favourite sweet treats from the day were these gorgeous little Bumble Bee Chocolates. I can't claim them completely, they were inspired by this cake.

I did try using a FooDoodler but found a little melted milk chocolate worked better. Using a ziplock bag with the corner snipped I piped on the detail.

A few times. . .

Quite a few times. . .

And then added mini marshmallows that had been slightly squooshed (being the technical term) into wing shapes.

It was a warm day and I was impatient, which worked well as the marshmallows stuck nicely to the chocolate lines.

Special thanks go to Cousin B and Miss M who helped immensely with these beauties.

Lots of beauties.

A bevy of beautiful bumbly bees!

If you'd like to see the savoury selection, check out this previous post.

And when the times comes, this link will take you to the cake and favour post from this series.

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Teddy Bears Picnic Party - Part 1, Savoury

I can hardly believe our little Honey celebrated her first birthday 4 months ago! Where has the time gone? And I can hardly believe it's taken me so long to share all the glorious goodies from her party!

We decided that for Miss M's first birthday party we'd have a Teddy Bears' Picnic. I thought it was a cute enough party for a one year old, and was gender neutral enough that for any future additions to the family we could easily replicate it. I was busily Pinning ideas when I saw a Winnie the Pooh dressed up as a bumble bee. I had a light bulb moment and though that would be the perfect take on a Teddy Bear's Picnic for our little Honey (Bee).

We had a small gathering in a local park so everything had to be easily transported and/or assembled 'on site'.

I made up some simple yellow (corn relish and Philly cheese) dip and added a few olives to create a bee look in the centre of my Tupperware chip 'n' dip. Then each section was filled with alternating black/yellow goodies. Yellow Kiwi fruit, blueberries, Ritz/Jatz, olives, yellow capsicum, and store bought olive bread.

I was so chuffed with how these bumble bee  curried quail eggs turned out!

Served on a (washed, new) paint tray, the centre holds a container of curried mayonnaise, and each bee is decorated with nori detail and cucumber wings.

The eggs were coloured following this fantastic tutorial from Little Miss Bento.

There were a few leftover so they were sliced in half and laid upon their cucumber wing slices with a dollop of the curried mayo.

Then there was the bee hive inspired cob loaf!

The top layer was a simple hamburger bun, while the centre held all the yumminess that is a classic cob loaf. The bottom layer was a damper. All the bread store bought. To make the cheesey filling I basically followed the topping I use when making sour cream potatoes.

Blanch some spinach leaves, fry some bacon and a little onion. In a saucepan melt together equal parts of sour cream and grated cheese (like mozzarella) with a generous helping of butter. Add your spinach and bacon mixes and stir to combine. Fill your hollowed out cob loaf with the cheese mix and bake until golden.

Cut from the menu were these cute muffin pizzas. Store bought english muffins topped with pizza sauce, cheese, pepperoni and cheerio slices.

Stay tuned this week for more Teddy Bear Picnic fun! After publishing, you will be able to click through to see:
Part 2, Sweet and
Part 3, Cake!

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Loving a Challenge. . .

Have you heard about Crunch a Color's 52 New Foods Challenge? Try a new food each week for a year, how simple is that? And there's even an inspiring cookbook you can use! I was lucky enough to receive a copy late last week and couldn't wait to get started! I flipped through the book and one of the recipes that grabbed me was the Whole Wheat Flour pizza base. I didn't have all the ingredients so I opted to try out a variation of something we are familiar with. 52 New Foods doesn't just celebrate new foods, but also new cooking techniques and variations on the old. So Pumpkin, Spinach & Ricotta Pizza was born!

Start by roasting some pumpkin/squash. Coat lightly with oil and bake at 180-200 degrees until soft and tender. Depending on the size of your pieces anything from 30 to 90 minutes. Yes roast with the skin on! It is delicious and gives the cooked pumpkin a fantastic texture!

One of the best things about this pizza is that you get to have roast veggies for dinner the night before! As you can see I like a touch (or more) colour on my roast pumpkin.

Don't forget to bake extra pumpkin and once cooled store in a covered container in the fridge. You can also toss in whatever other leftover vegetables you have. These peas were a perfect addition.

Spread your chosen pizza base (this is a store bought tortilla, the girls had corn tortillas, but I am looking forward to making this on the whole wheat flour base from the 52 New Foods book) with a little sauce and *lots* of pumpkin.

I simply scooped the flesh from the skin and smushed it onto the base, swirling and spreading. This is a great step to get the children involved in!

Blanch some baby spinach leaves in boiling water for a minute or two until bright green and tender. Drain and squeeze away excess moisture. You can leave whole, but I like to roughly chop.

I always have some zip lock bags of capsicum/bell peppers in my freezer. Whenever I see them on special I grab a few and if they are not used straight away they get sliced or diced and thrown straight in. They are perfect for adding a little colour (and extra vegetables!) to pizzas, pasta sauces, soups, you name it!

One you have all your ingredients prepped you can call in the creative genius that is your offspring to help layer up your pizzas. Start adding your ingredients form the outside of the pizza and drag them inwards rather than dumping them all in the middle and spreading them outwards. See, my time at Pizza Hut did prove educational!

Spinkle a little grated mozzarella on your pumpkin and tomato paste base, then add a little sliced ham, pepperoni, diced capsicum/bell pepper, baby spinach, some of those peas for last night's dinner gently smashed and a few dollops of ricotta.

Lastly add another layer of grated mozzarella (or any other hard grated cheese) and a swirl of sauce if desired. 

Once Miss M saw my BBQ sauce swirl she wanted a tomato sauce swirl too.

Bake at 180-200 degrees until the cheese has melted and started to turn golden. The mini sized ones took about 15 minutes.

And the mummy sized one took about 25, but I do refer a little more colour :-)

How gorgeous is that!

A perfect way to try something new is to mix it with something old - who doesn't love pizza?

And these bases are so thin that you can roll each slice into a perfect toddler or baby sized morsel. Not that they lasted long enough to photograph!

And what do you do with the pumpkin seeds? Well roast them of course! There's a simple recipe in the 52 New Foods book that's going on my make list (since my first attempt was less than successful).

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches & 52 New Foods Challenge who generously provided me with a copy of their book. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product. This post may contain affiliate links.

Repurposed Formula Dispenser Snacks

 I love picking up hints & tips from all sorts of sources. This one came from the Mothers Group I met when Honey was born. At one of our get togethers I noticed one mum using a formula dispenser as a snack container - why didn't I think of that?!? I love that the ones I found are roughly the same size as a drink bottle so they fit rather well into the pockets on the side of the girls' backpacks. Handy when looking at travelling :-)

This trial run outing Honey had some powdered milk (for just in case), a sandwich, strawberries and Milk Arrowroots.

Miss M has a slightly different container with deeper sections. She also has strawberries and Milk Arrowroots. Her third section has some limited edition Australian shaped Shapes.


Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product.

Nachos Three Ways

Featuring a holiday at home lunch today. Nachos is something we don't have that often because I like the heavily flavoured chips which I know can't be good for any of us, so this is a real treat.

My version is all layered together on the plate. Chips, mince, cheese (grilled), salsa, sour cream and mexican chilli spice mix.

Honey has hers deconstructed. Sour cream, chips, mild salsa, mince and cheese.

And Miss M's is a happy medium. Chips served separate to the mince and cheese. No salsa for her today and for some reason she said no to the sour cream as well.

What's your favourite holiday lunch?

Details of my tools & toys can be found on this page.

~J

Disclosure: This is not a sponsored post. This post was written for Loving Lunches. No product was received for this post. All opinions expressed are my own, based on my personal experience with the product.