Sugar Skull Birthday.

Crusty turned 10 this Saturday ( again, how did that happen?). He had two requests for his birthday, a Sugar Skull cake of his design, and bowls of gross things to stick your hands into. We decorated with PAPEL PICADO BANNERS and skeletons from Crusty's collection.

Earlier in the week I made sugar skulls for people to decorate, foil wrapped dark chocolate skulls and white chocolate lollis for the goody bags ( Thanks Pippa!)

Other than the cake and Daddy's gallery of grossness that was it.I don't have any good photos of the gallery but picture reaching in through shredded paper to bowls of cold slimy cooked pasts rolls, boiled grapes and raisins, yucky rubber worms and cottage cheese. Yuck! there were many squeals of delight and disgust!

The kids decorated skulls, ate cake, opened presents and played themselves silly. No games, no organized activities. It was exactly the party that Crusty asked for. We kept the guest list small (11 kids total) and that also seemed to work in our favour. There were no melt downs, no fights,no headlong crashes into ponds. Crusty's best friends ( adults and kids, minus a couple )were here. A good time was had by all.

The cake was Pumpkin Thunder cake, two layers. With cream cheese frosting and chocolate ganache glaze. The bone pillars are gum paste and white chocolate ( remnants from the Alien Princess Wedding cake), the tombstone is rice crispie treats and white chocolate.

The sugar skull on top was made from a mold ( sugar, meringue powder and water) and decorated with plain old frosting in a tube. In the past I have decorated these with royal icing, which is a royal pain. In all fairness the tube frosting worked just great, I hate the taste but since it is not meant to be eaten...The top of the cake is rice crispie treats again (frosted with the same frosting as the rest of the cake). The rice crispies are much lighter than regular cake and much easier to stack. Because I am a poor planner it took three people to put the top on ( stupid pillars were to heavy to stand without the top holding them down. It all tasted good and held up well. Most importantly Crusty declared it to be the best party ever and declared that I must be the best cake baker/ decorator in the whole world. I can't tell you how happy that makes me. I have worked long and hard to gain Crusty's trust and friendship. We don't always succeed but on Saturday he was proud of me and I was proud of him. What more can any parent ( step, surrogate, biological, accidental or otherwise) ask for.

We also got to meet Crusty's new sister on Saturday, she fit right in and made herself at home. As a family group we must be doing something right if a 13 year old stranger can come right in, settle down and have fun. She was a big hit with Doodle too!