Cake Decorating Party- Dollar Store Supplies

My daughter Kiki LOVES to cook! She is always saying that she wants to have her own bakery when she grows up. Last year we made a Sweet Shop in our basement! If you want to see it click HERE! The amazing thing is we STILL have this up in our basement a year later! 

 I really didn't want to throw a HUGE party again. I wanted to just go somewhere and have them do all of the work. However, once I saw how much it would cost, I decided to have it at our house. 

After talking it over with my husband and Kiki we decided that a cake decorating party would be the easiest. We had her pick 5 close friends so they could all fit comfortably around the dining room table. 

The first thing to consider when having a cake decorating party was how to prepare the cakes. We decided it would be best if the cakes were made before hand and the girls would just have fun decorating them during the party. I searched and searched for the best size cake pans. I didn't want to spend a lot of money and then have something I wouldn't use later. We finally found these ceramic ramekins at World Market that were about 5 inches in diameter. They only cost about 2 dollars each. As you can see in the picture below we also bought a few smaller ramekins to see if we wanted a smaller cake layer on top. I will tell you now it was easiest to have just two 5in circle cakes. It made it easier to put the icing on since that is the trickiest part. 

One cake box mix filled all 6 of these ramekins. So if you were just going with the 5in ramekins, you might get away with filling 5 with one box of cake mix.

 What we did, starting about a week or two before Kiki's party, was bake a bunch of batches of cakes one at a time. We would make a batch, cut the tops off to make them flat, flash freeze them on a cookie sheet, and then store them in a ziplock bag in the freezer until the day of the party. It would be easier to choose one type of cake but we wanted the girls to have the option to choose between white and chocolate so we had to bake a lot of cakes! I think all together, pictured below is two boxes of chocolate cake and three boxes of white. The great thing is you can find box cake mix at the dollar store so it didn't cost us much it just took a lot of time! 

The morning of the party we pulled all of the cakes out of the freezer and placed them on parchment paper to defrost. It only takes about 2 hours!

Next is the fun part! I let Kiki pick out tons of candy that she thought would be good to decorate the cakes with. A good place to pick out candy is the dollar store because your kids can go crazy and it won't cost you a fortune! I also found theses small plastic bowls at the dollar store, 12 for $1. These were perfect because the girls could pass them around the table.

   

 I got this cute 3 tier serving platter from IKEA. The 12 little bowls fit perfectly on the plates.

You can also just place the little bowls around the table.

   

 One of my favorite things to do when decorating for a birthday is hanging regular balloons from the ceiling with curling ribbon. It's so much cheaper and better than dealing with helium!

 The other goodies we got for the party were also all from the dollar store! They had these cute aprons, the "silver" plates, and also a spatula/spreader. We got one per person and they got to take them home after the party as favors along with their yummy cake!

Here is another look at the table with Kiki's donut birthday cake on the corner.

  

We also scored because we found these pastry bags with different decorating tips for icing at the Dollar store! Seriously, they have EVERYTHING there!

We set it up with every color of the rainbow. Each pastry bag held one tub of icing. We put three colors of icing on one end of the table and three at the other end.

   

 When all the girls arrived we let them pick out two white cakes, two chocolate cakes or one white and one chocolate cake. Then, we let them choose a whole tub of either chocolate or vanilla icing. One tub was the perfect amount of icing for the center and then to cover the whole cake. 

FYI, You can also get tubs of icing from the dollar store!

I told the girls before they started that they couldn't mess up their cakes! If they felt they didn't like something just add more icing and candy! 

At one point, a little piece of the cake fell off of one of the girls cakes. No problem at all, we decided to make a pink and purple waterfall out of that part! 

It was all about having fun, not about a perfect end product!

Everyone had a blast!

 Here are my little chefs having fun decorating their cakes!

The birthday girl got to wear this cute chef hat to match her apron!

Since Garren was the only sibling present at the party, we set him up at his own little table right by the girls! He loved being a part of the fun!

As you can see here, this type of party can even be for younger children. My son is 4 and he did a wonderful job decorating his cake with little help.

   

 Another thing we found at Target was small piñatas, one for each girl. They had fun breaking their own personal piñata open. Garren got sad because he wanted to brake one also so I found some extra candy and duct taped one back together. He didn't know the difference!

   

Here is Kiki's end product! 

What a great way to end your birthday, on a SUGAR HIGH!