project princess tea party continues

So when I asked Mary James a few weeks ago what she would like to do for her 4th birthday party... this was what she rattled off over the course of the next couple of days...

spend the night party
bouncy castle
swim party
princess
lots of hearts and ribbons party (?!)
ballerina
and that's all I can remember....

It reminds me of when I was with child (mills) and she wanted to name her Rainbow Princess Darling Cupcake and when she told people this (which she did a lot) they would say, "that's a long name, what will you call her for short" and MJ would look at them like they had lost their mind and say "ballerina" because what else would you call a newborn baby girl? When I told her it was going to be Mills - she laughed like i was being silly and said "that's a boy's name". Once she understood that it really was going to be her name, she said how about "chocolate cupcake icing mills" .. as if that was a compromise from the first suggestion. So, for the first few weeks she called her cupcake Mills...and now it's just Mills (thank goodness).

It's almost like rainbows go off in her head instead of lightbulbs when she has all these "great" ideas. Anyway, back to my point... A friend helped me narrow it down and I decided on a princess tea party. And our decorations are involving ribbons and hearts and I think that's the best I can do to incorporate her ideas.


It will have to be a surprise as to what we are going to actually do with these decorations, mostly because i have no idea yet.

I'm sure something will pop into MJ's head soon though. And, I know that this party is still weeks away... but I like to plan and we need something to do INSIDE in this 100+ degree heat we have been having. So, we decided to practice making the petit fours. I'm really not even sure why I'm going to show you this picture it is such a pitiful attempt, but maybe it can be the "before" picture of my beautifully perfect "after" picture.

There were a couple of things working against me on this... for one - MJ wanted chocolate. I think it's a whole lot harder to make the chocolate ones pretty. Shanna had the good idea to make the icing hot pink to "help" with the prettiness (not her words, mine). And it really did look better than if the icing had been white (i think). Jim said they were really really good, so at least I got the taste down. Another thing was time constraint. I was NOT taking my time - Mills was due to be up any minute and I really should have been starting supper at this point, so I was hurrying. Which, obviously, is not something you can do with these things. And I stopped to fix a glass of wine halfway through because really.... you kind of need a drink once you see the finished product. The recipe and directions come from Darby..(who if reads this - is thinking - don't put my name on that! but go look at hers..they are perfect). one point she made (that i chose to ignore) was how they need to be square or at least levelled.

I also did not have a real cooling rack so I just made do. Another thing I was surprised by was you need TONS of icing...Darby did warn that about 1/2 drips off, but you need a lot to begin with.

If you are wanting to make these (because i know my pictures of them just make you so excited about diving in) here's the recipe I used for icing. (2 cups powdered sugar, 1/4 cup whole milk, 1 teaspoon clear vanilla- and this only halfway covered 12 cakes). We're going to try some white cake today and see if it looks any better. Wish us luck and please send any party ideas our way!!