Impending tea party

Tomorrow we officially celebrate Kate's birthday with a little tea party we're holding over at Steve & Joy's. We're inviting all the 3rd Ave kids and besides, their house is just nicer. Since it's a tea party, I decided Kate should have cupcakes that look like teacups. I have a carefully laid out plan in my Whimsical Bakehouse book for this sort of thing, but they do three 6" cakes and I think that will not do with a bunch of 3-year-olds. Everyone will need his or her own teacup. So first, I had to find the right vessel for the teacups. My immediate thought was...teacups.

Those worked out well enough, but were tricky because porcelain, while oven-safe, isn't the best conductor of heat. Even when you stick an aluminum pan beneath it (though I can attest that doing that helps). Joy found an aluminum pan at JoAnn's fabrics for me. I still owe her the $11 for it. She's been very polite and hasn't mentioned it.

The shape and size is nearly identical to my tea/coffee cups which is to say a bit too large for a single serving of cake and icing but what the heck, it's a party. So they wake up with the telltale low blood sugar tummy ache kid's birthday party hangover, it's childhood!

I experimented with the pan to find out how much batter should go in and how long I should bake the cakes. Jeremiah, Steve and Joy and I took care of those results. I think you know what I mean.

I had tested all the cake-making tools but I hadn't tested the decorating. I have not previously decorated a cake in my life. Not once. So last night and today I spent nearly every waking non-child caring moment I had up until now decorating tea-cupcakes. The style of my frosting skill reminded me of something I'd seen recently...

Still, I'm pleased with the results. My first handles broke off and I had to remake them and insert them after the decorating was done which was tricky. The humidity is making the icing not harden. I tried the fridge.

Two of the white chocolate spoons broke (make that 3, Jeremiah just confessed to breaking one while I was up here writing this).

All that aside, Kate is extremely excited to eat them. I'm excited for them to get eaten. The stress of worrying about their well being around her and the pets is making me feel a little sick. Or perhaps it's the tremendous amounts of frosting and white chocolate I've consumed during this process, who can say?