Bella's Witches and Wizards Birthday Party

so Bella's 3-year old Birthday party was 3 months ago and I thought maybe I should upload the pictures of the cake and how it was made. Unlike a 3 year old girl Isabella is in love with monsters, witches, vampires etc. Maybe because she was born end of October? 

She really wanted a witch party and because I always bake and decorate their birthday cakes I started panicking and wondered how in the world will I make a witch cake. Pinterest is full of some really cool cakes. The fact that I am not a professional baker and my cake skills are limited to twice a year with the kids birthday cakes made some of them impossible. I am always amazed at the talents of bakers out there - so cool.There was a lot of pictures floating around with the witch legs sticking out and I thought that that might be do-able. It really is...... and I came up with this....

Now I have to say even though there is a lot of pictures out there,  there is not a lot of instructions!

First I made the hat , broom ,legs and flames the weekend before.

 The party was the Sunday and I baked the cake on the Friday using This WASC cake recipe . I have never used it before but was very pleased with the result and if you are looking for a cake recipe that is gonna hold up for big cakes this is one you might want to give a try. I used a big round pound cake pan for the bottom and a normal round pan for the top of the cake. I filled the hole of the pound cake with chocolate ganache and then covered the cake with white chocolate ganache. I have always worked with butter cream frosting before but from what I heard of ganache it seemed that I might want to give it a try with this cake. I watched and used 3 part video tutorial on ganache and how to get a smooth edge to cover the cake. VERY HELPFUL and I do agree that it makes for smoother cakes. For a first try it didn't turn out bad at all. I covered it with black fondant added a brim and handles. Filled the top with chocolate frosting and green round candies for a green potion effect.

This was one heavy cake but enough to feed everybody and some.

the kids loved these legs sticking out......

The Party:

we had the party at My Gym in Walnut creek, CA and was definitely the best choice ever. The staff was great and the kids had fun with all the activities. They really went out of their way on making Bella feel special and she really loved that.

eventhough Miss Bella wanted a witch party we made it a Witches and Wizards party to include the boys as well. For the favor bags we made Little wizard and Little witch bags filled with Halloween goodies from oriental Trading . The wizard and witches hat was made with this tutorial from Delia Creates  for the wizard hats I made a shorter brim and added a felt star - for the witch hats we added some purple ribbon. The kids had much fun with these.

 There was a Mary's Pizza shack next door so we had pizza and fruit salad to fill those bellies. The fruit had was made with the same polystyrene cone I used for the fondant hat - covered it in kale and then all types of berries. for the water bottles I downloaded a witch on a broom picture and printed it on glue backed purple and green paper sheets. The Witch potion was lemonade with sprite. what you cant see in this picture was  these little reusable round ice cubes that looked like eyeballs drifting in the "potion" I wish I had made pupils on them to look more real.

 The Party crew!

And so another Birthday party is finished and we all had fun. The girl was happy and she felt special and at the end of day all that matters which makes it a huge success!

till next time........