A rainbow birthday

by Leyla [Thisdayilove] - 23:25

My eldest celebrated her 3rd birthday this weekend. We decided on a rainbow/colour theme for her party. Originally I had wanted to have an art party but she asked for a bouncy castle for her birthday, so I stuck with the original rainbow/colour theme but got her a bouncy castle too.

My first task was to make her a birthday cake. I wanted to do something bright and colourful and also incorporate one of my eldest [and my] favourite things, sweets. Swizzels Matlow sent us a lovely box of rainbow drops and squashies, this got my creative mind to work.

I first made the cake and settled for my faithful sponge cake.

Ingredients for a 9" round cake

450g self raising flour, sifted

400g caster sugar

400g butter

52ml milk

7 eggs

Method

1. Pre heat oven to 150C and grease cake tin

2. Add all mixture into a bowl and mix together.

3. Optional add food colouring. I separated into 7 bowls and added 7 different colours to create a colourful inside cake.

4. Mix well.

5. Add mixture into cake tin. I added each colour in turn to create a layered effect.

6. Place cake in oven for 1 and half to 2 hours.

I made two cakes, one for the top and the other the bottom. With the bottom cake I cut a whole out of the middle and filled with rainbow drops and coloured chocolate. Be-careful when cutting the hole, as you need to leave enough cake to support the weight of the top cake.

I covered all the cake in butter cream and suck both cakes together. I used squashies to go round the sides of the cake, I needed 3 packets. For the edging I used coloured fruit laces. I liked the colourful effect the squashies gave to the side of the cake, I decided to use rainbow drops to fill in the gaps between the squashies.

I wanted to create something which would represent a rainbow on the top of the cake. I created a number 3 from squashies and edged with rainbow drops. Blue sugar crystals were then used to create a sky, around the rainbow number 3.

The cake was finished with rainbow Happy birthday candles. My daughter really loved the cake, and I kept catching her through the day trying to take the sweets from it.

The bouncy castle arrived and my eldest ran outside to play on it.

I took the opportunity to get the party boxes ready. I had decided not to use plastic party bags this year but instead do something different. I wanted a box to represent the pot of gold you would find at the bottom of the rainbow. The idea was to fill with chocolate coins, chocolate coins are very difficult to locate in August. I therefore settled with rainbow theme. I filled with sweets and chocolate that met the rainbow theme, added some pirate gold to represent the gold from the bottom of the rainbow and a magnifying glass to help go on more treasure hunts.

I finished off the cake decorations, by adding glasses of rainbow drops to the corners of the cake board.

We tried to stick to the rainbow theme for food too. With rainbow fruit sticks. These were very popular.

And Rainbow vegetables.

It was time to light the candles and sing happy birthday. My eldest has been practising singing happy birthday and my youngest likes to clap at the end. She was ever so happy that she got to blow out the candles. We cut open the cake and I was a little disappointed that some of the colours had not worked. The gel colours worked really well so next time I think I will just use gel. The sweets fell out the middle of the cake really nicely though and it was a lovely effect.

After cake it was time to start playing on the bouncy castle again.

It wasn't long before my eldest wanted to open her presents. My youngest of course wanted to help.

She got some really lovely presents and her eyes lit up with everyone, she was ever so excited. My youngest must have been watching because when my eldest had gone back to the bouncy castle, she took her opportunity to look through the presents.

Later whilst I was tidying up my eldest took it upon herself to 'test' out some of her birthday presents. This one seems to be a particular favourite she likes to try