Cake Wars Birthday Party

I’m definitely not “THAT” party mom you see all over pinterest. Parties stress me out to be completely honest, but I love how special my kids feel when their friends come over and fuss over them. We just don’t do it every year. We throw friend parties at years 5, 8, 12, and 16 at our house. That way we can do a little bit bigger party plans. For example, when Connelly turned 8, we rented a giant blow up water slide, and when Oaklyn turned 12, I surprised her and a few friends with a trip to Vegas to a water park. I figure, that by forgoing “friend” parties most years, we can make these benchmark year parties memorable.

Londyn turned 8 this year, and in our LDS religion, turning 8 is a big deal. She is getting baptized this Saturday. So, that is why I say turning 8 is a benchmark year. 🙂 

She could NOT decide what type of party she wanted. I told her it was completely her choice. We searched for ideas together, and she changed her mind 100 times, but she settled on CAKE WARS! I told her she could invite as many people as she wanted, but I figured we wouldn’t have a ton because it was going to be the weekend before Thanksgiving. 

She invited 19 girls…19 girls came! HAHAHA. It was fun and exhausting <—don’t tell Londyn, I’ll deny it. She thinks I’m superwoman. 

I baked 18 cakes. YEP, I was 1 cake short, but we improvised and opened presents first while I threw another cake in the oven. BAM, we had enough. 

I bought round disposable cake pans from Dollar Tree 3 for $1 {similar to these on Amazon}, and I measured 1 cake mix to 3 pans. I weighed the cake batter so that they would bake evenly. Each pan had about 11.7 oz of batter  <—this will help you a ton if you tackle this party! I baked 3 cakes at a time at 325 degrees for 20 minutes exactly. It took a few tries to master how long to bake them, but 20 minutes seemed to work perfectly. 

I made cake decorating icing and dyed them the colors of the rainbow. I bought these awesome cake decorating tips,  a bunch of decorating couplers, and disposable cake decorating bags too. We even bought a few varieties of sprinkles. 

The girls had a blast and decorated the cakes beautifully! Before we started decorating the cakes, I faked did a short demonstration of cake decorating and showed the girls a few possibilities of frosting patterns. 🙂 

The only advice I have is to give the birthday girl a prize too. We had my oldest daughter and her friends be the judges, and although they judged fairly and kindly by giving all of the girls fantastic compliments, the birthday girl was very upset that she didn’t win. So, if you have a cake wars party yourself, make sure you give out two prizes: one for the birthday girl and one for the winner of the war! 

If you have a party every year for your kids’ birthdays you have my upmost respect. 

xoxo,

Brooke

PS. I hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving.