Cupcakes and Hot Dogs

I have been spending most of this week preparing for my son’s first birthday party. He doesn’t know that it’s almost his birthday, and he won’t notice what kind of food I serve or how elaborate the cake might be.

Despite all this, I am hopelessly lost on the road to overdoing it.

I should have kept it easy. I should have done very simple food and a very simple cake. Or even cupcakes, maybe even store-bought ones. But no, my menu includes appetizers, salads, pasta, grains, and fish, all on a tropical, jungle theme. (Yes, there is a theme. I know. I’m out of control.)

And don’t forget the cake. Oh, the cake. I found this cute picture of a jungle-themed cake online, and I thought it didn’t look too hard. Oops. Turns out there are a lot of things about cake that I didn’t know, such as how to stack two cakes on top of each other (apparently you need posts and cake boards), and that there are 20 different kinds of icing, each with a different purpose.

My cake involves a lot of fondant, a pliable icing that you can shape and stretch like play-doh. You can buy fondant, but being the intrepid domestic diva that I am, I made it myself. Twice. (The first batch was a massive failure.)

You have to knead fondant like bread, but for three times as long, and then you have to let it sit overnight, and then you have to colour it, and then you have to shape it into animals that are trickier than they look. (Have you ever created a lion’s mane out of play-doh? It’s hard.)

Oh, and did I mention the fondant palm trees with breadsticks as trunks? Yes, it’s that kind of cake.

But we’re in too deep to back out now. The leaves are done, the animals are made, and a big hunk of butter is sitting in my fridge like an uninvited foreigner. I have to use it for something.

The party is still two days away and I’m already exhausted. I don’t know how many hours I’ve spent on this ridiculous cake. The house still needs to be cleaned, the rest of the food needs to be cooked, and at some point I should put on something nice and do my hair. (I will not be a slummy mummy on my son’s birthday.) I wonder, would it be bad form to open the wine before my guests arrive?

Next year, I’m doing cupcakes and hot dogs.