Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Our Farm Birthday Story!


Aarav, my son loves barn animals and his favorite rhyme is "Old Mac Donald had a farm"
He loved watching this rhyme a 100 times and would be eager for more any time of the day!
For us it was Old Mac Donald overdose!


To cheer his love for old Mac Donald and barn animals, weeks before his Third Birthday, my husband and I wanted to give him a farm themed Birthday party! We thought of farm themed goodie bags for guests, cake, cupcakes and cookies!

I love to bake and wanted everything "Mom-made" for my boy!

I derived inspiration form many sources online! With all those ideas bubbling in my head, I couldn't go to bed, every night I was imagining so many things, what, when and how it should be done.
It was a big project, hopefully a successful one!
 
 A week before his Birthday, I planned on making the fondant animals, Cows, A horse, sheep, chickens with a nest, ducks and they looked great! Everyday I got to work for 2-3 hours when my son napped. It was important to keep all this a “Shhhh”... Surprise! There was no way I wanted him to see those animals before his Birthday!
It was a joy making these cute animals! The more you work with fondant the more creative you get. As I put together the parts of the animals they looked great! These appealing, cute lil animals were ready to be placed on a cake. The cake!

 
 



 I also made about 48 fondant animal faces to be placed on the cupcakes! I enjoyed doing every bit of this. I was so thrilled when they all started looking great together. 
The day before his birthday, I planned on baking the cake and that night my thoughts took over my sleep and I was so restless. I hoped that the cake turns out well and nothing goes wrong! 
Next morning, I baked 5 layers pineapple sponge cake, 2 layers of chocolate magic cake, about 50 cupcakes and 5 dozens of sugar cookies with Aarav's name, flowers and the number 3!
Wow! I had turned my kitchen into a bakery! It was great, the sugary buttery perfume for days!
I primed 3 types of icing. A fresh cream icing with pineapple chunks to get into the layers of the sponge cake, Chocolate hazelnut fresh cream for the chocolate cake and the butter cream icing tinted in colors for decorating the cake.

So now was the BIG, important, final task, putting them all together to make those dramatic thoughts and imagination a reality.
The decorations were looking so fantastic! We used animal patterned balloons and colored paper, it was simple yet festive. My husband did a wonderful job!

It was about 4 pm, on 19th of May, Aarav was napping, I started my assembly, focused. I put them all together and here’s how it looked. It was the most complicated cake I had made till date and with the way it looked and tasted, I was proud of myself.

Aarav woke up and looked at the décor and the goodies and he said “This is for me! Thank you Mommy and daddy, I love you. I loved the surprise” He hugged us and that moment was pure bliss. It was worth all our efforts! That expression on his face and those precious words he said will always be in our heart forever!


 
We got ready for our guests and it was a great party with great food and wonderful people!