Fairy 5th Birthday Party

My eldest daughter Molly just turned 5! We had a party for her on the weekend, she chose a fairy theme as she is very into Tinkerbell at the moment. I tried to resist having an entirely Tinkerbell party but there was a lot of her :) The 9 little girls in attendance, in their gorgeous fairy outfits, all seemed to have a good time.

I made a fairy cake with little Tinkerbell figurines on it. Molly started out wanting a carousel/merry-go-round cake with horses but we changed it to a fairy merry-go-round to fit in the theme better. It turned out really well, but I may have stayed up very late finishing it off the night before!

The base cake was a 24cm Nigella Lawson vanilla buttermilk birthday cake (1 1/2 batches) covered in pale green buttercream. The top was a Nigella Lawson sour cream chocolate cake (1/2 batch) baked in a bowl, covered in ready-to-roll fondant dyed pale pink. I piped bright pink buttercream flowers all over the cakes, which I quite enjoyed! These are the kids favourite bit of course! It was assembled with 6 ribbon covered cake dowels and a ribbon covered cardboard tube which were just poked into the cake with the top cake (on a cardboard cake board) resting on top. Some of the figurines were dangling from the top cake by fishing line so the fairies were flying.

For the rest of the food I made:

• butterfly and flower shaped cheese pastries (puff pastry with grated cheese) - these were Molly's favourite and were the easiest to make
• sausage rolls  - I like this recipe, I used beef sausage mince from the butcher and skipped the herbs - make plenty as the parents always like them too!
• fairy bread
• pink fruit skewers with strawberries, red grapes and watermelon
• pink meringues
• coconut ice

We decorated the room with silk flowers and balloons. The lolly bags had wizz fizz, strawberries and cream, musk sticks, and candy-bracelets. For prizes I found Tinkerbell glitter glues in a wand shape and mini fairy notebooks.

I find it best to keep the kids busy for the whole party, so we played lots of games:

• musical flowers (like musical chairs but with cardboard flower shapes)
• fairy treasure hunt in the garden - they looked for chocolate coins, the Tinkerbell glitter glues, and shiny cut out stars and flowers
• Pin the wand on the fairy - we used the star cutouts they had found on the hunt
• Pass the parcel - with a candy bracelet in every layer, as Molly said "it was fair because we all got an eating bracelet"
• and we finished by turning on the Tinkerbell Movie.

I couldn't resist having a cooking activity at the party, I love cooking with kids and seem to find a whole extra patience reserve. We made marshmallow fairy wands that I saw on Juicy Bits.

Marshmallow Fairy Wands
wooden sticks or skewers
marshmallows
white chocolate melts
pink and purple food dye (the liquid pink dye worked much better than the purple paste)
lots of sprinkles
piece of polystyrene foam

Melt the white chocolate and add food colouring to get desired colours. Place in small bowls to allow for easy marshmallow dipping. Put the sprinkles in little bowls.

Place a marshmallow on the blunt end of the stick. Dip into chocolate and into sprinkles.

Stick skewer into piece of polystyrene to allow to dry.

Our fairies made 3 each and when they were dry I put a cellophane bag over them and tied with curling ribbon to send home.