Pandamonium - Part 2

21^st Birthday

It may not be my 6^th birthday but I can still have fun party food for my birthday if I want to!

  

So as my birthday was on the 28^th February my Mum and I decided to try and make panda cupcakes as mentioned in my previous post.

We didn’t stick to one recipe in particular but instead used ideas from what we had seen online and in the Hello, Cupcake! recipe book and made a mixture of panda heads and full size pandas.  

This is what we used:

Standard cupcake mix – When mixing this with the electric mix my Mum had not learnt her lesson from making reindeer cakes and we ended up with the mixture exploding all over the kitchen again!

Butter icing – To cover the cupcakes. The Hello, Cupcake! recipe recommends using vanilla frosting; however we could not find any ready-made frosting in our supermarket so had to make our own. The only problem with this was that our icing was more yellow than we would have liked because of the butter used. So our panda’s fur was a rather off-white!

Marshmallows – Hello, Cupcake! recommends sticking mini marshmallows to the top of the cupcakes with the icing to create a point for where the panda’s nose goes and then cover the marshmallow with frosting when covering the rest of the top of the cake.

Oreos cut in half – For the ears.

Poppets – For the noses.

Piped black icing – We used black food colouring to make the icing for the mouth and eyes.

Chocolate chips – For the eyes.

Piped white icing – For the eyes and claws.

Mini cupcakes – For the heads of the full size pandas

Crushed Oreos – For the fur on the body of the full size panda as suggested in Hello, Cupcake!

Chocolate buttons – For the ears of the full size pandas.

Here’s how they turned out:

We also added decorations to make them into a proper birthday cake and of course grass, for the authentic 'panda in the wild' look!

Although, these cakes are not featured in any children’s books you could take inspiration from a children’s picture book based on animals for a party theme as there are many out there. For example:

Elmer by David McKee

Frog by Max Velthujis

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

Monkey and Me by Emily Gravatt

Michaela Strachan’s Really Wild Adventures by Michaela Strachan

Using the different animals kids discover in picture books you could have a zoo or farm themed party and have a different food based around each animal such as rainbow biscuits in parrot shapes, sandwiches cut into elephant shapes and the possibilities to make cupcakes with any animal are endless as presented in the Hello, Cupcake! recipe book. Having an animal theme for a young child’s party would also help with their learning of how to identify the different animals and their names which is often taught in picture books. This shows how children's literature can be used as inspiration for the food created for kids and can be educational too.

Pandamonium - Part 1

Pandas are one of my favourite animals and after making reindeer cakes I really wanted to try making a panda version. I love animals, which a lot of children do too so I thought animal themed cupcakes would be a great idea for a party.

I had a few ideas myself of how to make panda cupcakes such as with Oreos for ears and I also had a browse on the internet to see what else I could find. Turns out they are a popular style of cake to make as I found many different versions, for example on this website:

http://www.birthdaycakes-idea.com/panda-cupcake-ideas-for-birthday-cake.html

Then my Mum borrowed a cupcake recipe book from a friend which had an amazing recipe for how to make them. Here's a bit about the book...

Hello, Cupcake! By Karen Tack & Alan Richardson.

This New York Times Bestseller states it has “Irresistibly playful creations anyone can make”. This is perhaps questionable as the book presents an array of elaborate cupcakes ranging from horse shaped ones to others decorated like roast dinners. To an inexperienced baker the challenges the book presents could be quite scary! However, in the ‘Cupcaking Techniques’ chapter the book gives detailed descriptions and lots of images demonstrating the methods used in the recipes included. So if you are enthusiastic to learn then the book is a good place to start your cupcake making adventure. The recipes are also easy to follow but as the book is American certain suppliers suggested to get the ingredients from are not available in the UK. 

This book is a great source to get many ideas for party cakes that children would love; so as the book states “find a project that tickles your fancy, grab a bag or two of candy, and get ready to put your smile into overdrive. It’s time to get this party started” (1). 

:)

I  too did what they said and got prepared to make panda cupcakes using the 'Pandamonium' recipe which you’ll see the results of in my next post!

Karen Tack & Alan Richardson. Hello, Cupcake! New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.