6: CAKE
No secrets: this is my favourite part 😀 But even if it isn’t yours, don’t stress! It doesn’t really take that much planning at all.
First questions first: How many serves will you need, what flavour/s do you want, and what design will you use? This is where your brainstorming can prove handy – you might already have some cake ideas in mind, but if not, you have a tightly-defined idea and you’ve already thought of your decorations, so you can quickly come up with something that fits in.
Consider: What is the absolute narrow focus of your party? Would that be a good idea for a cake? For example, I ended up with a cow cake, a rocket ship cake, and a treasure chest cake, all direct reflections of the very core of the party’s theme. Alternatively, you could think about what aspects of the focus your other decorations/food already have covered; is there another aspect you haven’t conveyed yet that could work as the cake?
 
The next thing to consider is who will be making the cake, and what your budget is. If you’re getting someone else to bake it, make sure to book as far ahead as you can so they can plan.
If you’re making the cake, these are the steps you’ll need to take:
1) Figure out the specifics of your design and flavours, including which recipes you’ll be using and how much you need to make. Don’t forget to take into account how much time you have: for the treasure chest cake, I originally planned to go all-out and do a woodgrain, hand-painted fondant cake. Then I realised that I was holding this party the weekend after school started back, meaning I’d have not a lot of time OR energy that week… and it was for a six-year-old. So instead, I went with the plain chocolate buttercream version in the picture – and the birthday boy was extremely happy, and I was happy with it too, AND I didn’t die trying to get everything done 🙂 (Start to finish I think decorating the cake only took me about an hour!)
2) Make a shopping list, not only of ingredients (for cake, icing, and possibly filling), but also of all the decorative items you want to include. For the treasure chest cake, I wanted a ‘six’ topper, which I ordered for about $12 from Etsy. Planning the cake and making the list early ensured I had enough time to order this custom item before the party.
3) Diarise! Plan when you’re going to shop (and always allow enough time to go BACK to the shop closer to the party in case you forget something – this is something I have to specifically plan, as there are only two or three specialty cake stores in town, and some of them have very limited opening hours, and all of them have different ranges of stock). Then plan when you’re going to bake the cake: unless it’s a light and fluffy cake, you can often make it up to a month beforehand and freeze it! I usually bake the cake the weekend before I need it, freeze it for a few nights, and pull it out with two nights to go. (This works well for me as I’m often baking mud cakes, and they freeze like a dream; I once had a family member freeze a filled mud cake for six months, and when it was defrosted it still tasted fresh!) Finally, plan when you’re going to decorate the cake. Since we usually do Sunday parties in our household, I tend to reserve Saturday late afternoon/evening for cake decorating. Most designs will hold up just fine overnight in the fridge, and fondant cake (which MUST be stored OUT of the fridge) can easily sit for a couple of days or more.
 
 
 
7: INVITATIONS
At this point, you’ve already had to think a couple of times about how many people you’re inviting, so now’s the time to crystallise that. Make your guest list, remember that the point here is keeping your chill and not dying. Don’t go overboard on the guests unless there is literally no other way around it!
Unless invitations happen to be your focus area, there’s really no point spending money on them these days. Consider digital invites: you can get great access to free or nearly-free invitations through websites like PaperlessPost (which will also track RSVPs for you – this is the site I use), and you can also make them yourself for free on websites like Canva. If you’re making them yourself, you could always browse somewhere like PaperlessPost first for ideas. When you’re done, simply download your image, and email it out to everyone. (Or, if you really want to, print them out at home and deliver them ;))
