Birthday Requests

Initially Gabe's fifth birthday cake was to be a volcano. We enthused about it for quite a few months. I researched how to best tackle the cake and then how to make it ACTUALLY EXPLODE, in a way that would not take out the eyes of every small child in a 50 metre radius. Plus it had to be edible afterwards.

The natives ran and screamed..

I had taught Gabe the phrase "pyroclastic flow" in readiness, so that other parents would be impressed with my child's precocious use of language and when told about it I would blithely answer "Oh did he? Oh well he does love to read!". An then I would have laughed my patented carefree parent laugh. It is a light sounding laugh, slightly distracted and adorably unselfconscious. I haven't really had much call to use it yet.

Anyway after all that research and time and energy and sourcing a tin that would be a good mountain shape and discussing a plan of attack with my good friend Sue - and then getting her excited about it too, he changed his mind.

"A spider"? I said, disappointed.
"Yes, a poisonous one", he replied.

Gabriel's two favourite topics of conversation are spiders and volcanoes, so I probably should have seen this coming. I probably also should have been grateful, spiders are easier, lets face it. And yet, I was a bit sad - I like it when things explode.

I thought about the spider. I looked at the volcano cake mould and thought how I could trim it till it was less mountainy and more like a thorax. I also micro managed his birthday. Fab and I had decided that a play centre would be easier then at one of our homes and then we could invite more kids - which makes it pretty costly - but easier. Costly, but easier. I kept saying that to myself over and over. like a mantra.

A play centre, for the uninitiated or those that don't have kids or perhaps for those that call it something else in their country, is a giant room filled with brightly coloured play equipment, bouncy castles, slides, sometimes motorised rides etc. It is heaven for children and hell for parents. They are usually located in blasted wastelands where massive warehouses can be built in a day. They are surrounded by commercial cleaning businesses, and storage facilities and dispatch centres. Except for our local one which has a place next door called "Xplicit". Xplicit is located literally right next door to "Clowning Around" - a play centre for tots, where parents come and go continuously from 9 to 5 each day. Xplicit is a play centre for men, where they come. Get it?

Right. Next. Door.

I told Gabe that it was a play centre for men and now he asks questions like "What sort of things do they have to play with in there?". "When can I go in there?" etc. How I field these questions depends on my mood - thus "They bring their own stuff to play with" (snigger) or "You can go there when you're 18, now go and slide down something".

Play centre in the background. Me kissing Gabriel before he turned into a hideous creature of avarice later in the day. 

The play centre that we went to is in a very nice neighbourhood and is the best of a bad bunch. The coffee is bearable and the place has party rooms set away from the action so that parents can cower and hide.

I decided to make spider cupcakes, this was because they are easier for kids to pick up and handle, they have their own paper underside and they would be CUTE! I could get excited about spider cupcakes. I talked Gabe round, he was skeptical at first, thinking that one big spider would be splendid - but I talked up the way that we could have more candy on cupcakes. It was a pretty short conversation really.

24 cupcakes. Naked. Full of potential.

I had asked Gabe what colour he wanted his spiders to be and he said - to my surprise - "blue, purple and green".

Me: Not brown or black?
Gabe: No.
Me: But aren't they poisonous?
Gabe: No Mummy, they are cupcakes

These exchanges are the very richness of life, are they not? And that's what I get for buying into his poisonous spider chitchat.

So, licorice legs, chocolate truffles cut in half with cachous jammed into them for heads and a slice of extra sour multi coloured strap on the back. We were modelling Red Back spiders, which are very venomous and also adorable- with their little stripe. 

Licorice legs!

I didn't do a single trial run on the spiders, not one. Fab and I did make one spider head, just so that I knew it could be done. But I didn't jam the legs into cupcake or anything. Which was probably a bit gung ho of me, upon reflection.

Heads! Gruesome, but practical.

I did do a trial with the icing, which Fab made - but I knew that the big curl was wrong - too fancy schmancy and French. With a French accent - see caption.

"Oh 'ello, you 'ave jerst cot me lounging at 'ome, lerking perfect"

So I plastered the icing on and Fab jammed the legs in and then we placed heads and added straps. The jamming of the legs required some minor excavation so that the legs would go in, this is where a trial run would have been handy, but no matter! The legs went in.. eventually.

Deadly!

Not venomous as yet, just your regular blue spider

The one thing that did prove difficult was getting them to the play centre, Transporting 24 cupcakes is actually quite complicated and since I was very nervous about loss of legs and heads I was an annoying passenger. To say the least. I gasped and grabbed at the handle of the car door for no reason at least 5 times.

Its an INFESTATION!!!

They looked great on the stand and what took about 4 hours to make and assemble took about 3 minutes to destroy. Of course. And that's the way it is.

Gabe had a great party, but was showered with so many gifts that he turned into a third world country dictator later on and then had to be sent to his room until he became more grateful.

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