A Birthday Pizza Party for a Six Year Old Boy!
And so in a blink of an eye our lovely Fin-Bob turns 6! It feels quite a grown up age in some ways- turning 6 feels like a big leap, a real turning point in his short life.
Fin is turning into, or always has been a real character. He is still obsessed with dancing, he particularly likes Michael Jackson and he still puts on regular dancing shows like the one I wrote about in this post about his dancing to Jackson and Bowie. He has a certain little head bop that I find him doing when he hears a song he likes. He is forever pretending to be in a band or building dens with his sister and playing ‘spies’. He’s growing up and testing boundaries everyday, his worst time is when he gets all giddy before bathtime but he is still very cuddly and loves a snuggle after his bath in his jammies. He always whispers ‘I’ll be there’ to me when he is off to school (another ode to Michael Jackson obviously.) In many ways he is easy-going and less opinionated than his sisters but in other ways he can’t bear any kind of injustice, struggles to cope with his overwhelming emotions and is quick to anger which often reduces him to tears. Oh how I hate to see him in a big bubbling ball of anger- I just want to scoop him up and cuddle it out of him!
Finlay originally wanted a Dinosaur Pizza Making Party at home?! But as our building work on our kitchen renovation was imminent, we opted for a Pizza Making Party at ‘Pizza Express’ instead. This turned out to be the most stress-free, easiest of parties EVER!
Little Orla was poorly and so didn’t get to come along which was a shame but Elodie did and Finlay invitied 6 of his little friends who are all absolutely lovely and just as obsessed with him with yummy pizza and so they really got stuck into the making and decorating of the pizzas. I loved that they were all so inquisitive – ‘what happens to the dough?’ ‘what does this taste of?’ It was so nice to stand back and let the restaurant take care of everything and so I felt I noticed little things that I wouldn’t normally. Like how quirky and inventive his friends are, just like him. One of them was terrified of hand-dryers, the other drew a design of their pizza on a napkin before executing it! Little people are so fascinating! Pizza Express let them do everything from tossing the dough to testing the sauce.
After they made the pizza, they got to take them to the oven and use the big shovel to cook them – this was definitely a big hit! There was complete silence once they received their pizzas to munch and then they even had a big ice cream to top it off. Then we bought out the cake….
Finlay was convinced that he wanted a pizza cake but I was a bit nervous about making them as my decorations often don’t turn out quite right! But I was pretty pleased in the end, especially as one of Finlay’s friends – exclaimed ‘oh I’m not having any of that cake – it’s got real pepperoni and olives on!’ High praise indeed!
If you’d like to know how to make a pizza cake – it’s dead easy. The cake was simply decoratated in white roll on icing (whoever invented roll on icing was a complete genius!) I topped it with a marzipan crust (my top tip is to smear Nutella on the marzipan crust to look like the crust has browned.) Next, I topped the cake with a mixture of strawberry puree and pink butter icing to act as the ‘tomato puree.’
For the sprinkled cheese, I grated some white chocolate which looked really effective – I was surprised! And lastly, I made some of the topping – olives were made out of rolled up black icing. The pineapple chunks were tutti fruttis and the green pepper was chopped green tutti fruttis. The pepperoni slices were made out of rolled out red gummy sweets and cut into circles! All in all it was a very easy cake to make.
To keep with the Pizza Theme, the party bags contained a Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle Book, glo-sticks and some pizza sweets and stickers from Amazon.
Mr M and I were completely relaxed after this party (unheard of usually) and we headed home for a lovely slice of shop bought pizza – it was very hard watching the children devour theirs so we felt we had to have some too!
