Neon rainbow party!

I'm sure you're curious about how we put together parties for our own kids, given we've now been catering for kids parties for 4 years now. So I thought I'd share some photos and details from my little girl's 4th birthday party with you.

Last weekend we celebrated my little girl's 4th birthday, with a 'neon rainbow' themed party. She wanted a rainbow theme for her party, and with neon / fluro being so on trend right now, we decided the rainbow should be neon!

Lots of very bright colours everywhere!

Aunty Dani made all the food, including pink iced cupcakes with neon edible glitter, and a pink gradient / ombre birthday cake. Miss 4 requested a 'rainbow' of pink for the inside of the cake, and wanted it to be banana flavoured. Dani thought it would be too intense if the whole cake was banana flavoured, so it was a traditional vanilla butter cake, with banana icing on the top, sides and in between each layer of cake. 

I made a cake topper to sit on top, with a rainbow coming out of a sparkly gold 'A'. The cake looked amazing when it was cut as you can see from the photos. It tasted fantastic too of course!

The cupcakes were vanilla butter cake as well, with vibrant pink icing which was dusted with amazing neon edible glitter that caught the light perfectly in real life, yet was hard to capture in photos.

The savoury food was all our usual favourites, petit pies, cocktail sausage rolls, mini hotdogs, veg samosas, and caramalised onion quiches.

Home made marshmallows were on the menu of course, this time they were vanilla bean marshmallow dusted in pink and purple sugar.

The kids also had a large bowl of orange quarters, and individual mini water bottles as it was a hot day.

We had 1kg of 'Happy Birthday' rainbow rock candy to fit with the theme. These were displayed in a glass jar, a glass bowl, and popped in cello bags in the take home party bags, along with fun brightly coloured sunglasses, neon giant balloons, neon slinkies and a few other little things.

The backdrop of the whole table was a garland I made the day before, using EXTREMELY neon crepe paper streamers. It was so bright it practically glows in the daylight! I had the idea for this in my head, but couldn't find any images or tutorials online about how to put it together, so I just made it up. It was really easy, so I'll try to put together a tutorial soon to share with everyone.

We had giant neon balloons as well, but unfortunately due to the heat outside, they popped when they went in the sunlight so we ended up with them all taking over our lounge room. I also found some neon pink round lanterns, so we hung them outside along the front of the shed. They looked so pretty I wanted to keep them up permanently but I think they colour would fade too fast if we did that.

It was great how easily this party theme came together, and surprisingly even with all the items I made it felt like very little effort was required on the actual day. I guess a lot of that is to do with having the food catered!

The birthday girl said she had a fun party, so looking back at all the photos I'm glad we put it together for her.

If you have any questions about where I got anything from, or how I made anything, please comment below and i'll let you know :)

Gift Hampers

With the "home made" and "baking" trends on the rise, Gift Hampers are becoming more and more popular as presents.

We made so many in December last year for our Clients, that we've decided to share with you just some of the options available.

There are many small options, such as a parcel of home made Marshmallows, a pot of freshly baked Shortbread, a bag of Rocky Road, some bite-size Chocolate Cherry Puddings, or a packet of Creamy Coconut Ice.  Here are some photos of the smaller options:

Red Velvet Cupcakes in boxes make great Christmas presents too. 

Then there are some larger options, such as a large jar of Marshmallows, or an assortment of tasty treats put together to suit any budget.

Christmas 2011

With the "Silly Season" well and truly over for another year, I thought I'd share with you some of the ideas we had for our own Christmas lunch this year.

As with most of our personal events, the emphasis was on the desserts and sweet items.  We had a massive 6kg ham, glazed with Chilli Jam, and roast potatoes, salad and rice as sides.  But the main event was the amazing Gingerbread House that looked like it was straight out of a storybook.

Here is a photo of the beautiful Gingerbread House.

To sit on the side of the Gingerbread House, and for everyone to nibble while they were admiring the house, we had red, green and white marshmallows and coconut ice.  And once we'd eaten the savoury course our Bûche de Noël, or "Yule Log" was placed on the table for everyone to eat.  We served it straight from the fridge, which made it lovely and cold on such a warm day.

We also put together lots of different Christmas gift hampers and baskets, which I'll show you in another post.

More photos from South Sydney Markets

A picture paints a thousand words, and I'm all out of words after Easter, so here are some recent photos.

Whoopie Pies!

We've known it for a while, but now it seems the rest of Australia is finally realising how great "Whoopie Pies" are!

Known as Whoopie pies, gobs, moon pies and cream cakes, these chocolate spongey marshmallow cakes are to die for!

Originally an American concept, we've adopted them into our collection of homemade treats. Who says that American's get to have all the fun?!

Whoopie Pies can be made in practically any flavour, just like macarons but we usually just make the standard chocolate cakey biscuits with our famous vanilla bean marshmallow in between.

Yesterday's issue of Sydney's Sunday Magazine featured Whoopie Pies calling them a new trend in baked goods.  So far, we don't know of anyone else in Sydney who makes them apart from Innocent Catering, so if you'd like to try some, but aren't the baking type, give us a buzz.

Our Whoopie Pies were a massive hit when we started selling them at the Bondi Junction Village Markets last year, despite the fact that no one knew what they were until they came to our stall!

Here are a couple of photos of our Whoopie Pies from the markets. 

Hipstamatic treats

Of course, with both Dani and I now having iPhones, we've been taking a lot of photos with them.  Lately we've been taking "Hipstamatic" shots of some of the things we've been making, so I thought I'd share some with you.