Birthday party food

Last night M had a sleepover/dinner party for her 7th birthday.

She asked if the food could be a make-your-own pizza, followed by make-your-own ice-cream Sundays. That sounded easy, so that was our menu. We also put out some chips (crisps for any non-Australia readers) and had a cake.

I used the recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance for the pizza bases. I made a triple batch. I made two large pizzas for Mr Brisvegan, J and I. I then made 8 little,15-20 cm pizza bases for the children to decorate. It went really well. I put out BBQ sauce, tomato paste and a range of toppings. Each child had their own base, on oven paper with their name on it. They each made their own pizza and I put it in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes (3 to a tray) until it was cooked. I think that next time, I would make even smaller bases, as most of the kids only ate around 1/2 their pizza as they were busy playing and talking. Though they did not eat everything, they loved the idea and happily ate their own creations.

I caved and put out cow cheese, as most of the children are not veg*n and I wanted M's party to go smoothly. The children, Mr Brisvegan and J had cow cheese pizzas, so I did not take a photo for the blog.

I had this one:



It was topped with mediterranean relish, vege dogs, zucchini, yellow capsicum, mushroom, kalamata olives, jalapenos, grape tomatoes and a scattering of Tofutti american cheese slices, broken into little pieces.

They followed the pizzas with icecream (again, cow-milk cased), with a selection of toppings. No-one was game to try the So-good icecream, though my kids are likely to eat it all today. For toppings, I hit the Cruelty Free Shop website last week. We had chocolate buttons, chocolate sprinkles, vegan strawberry jelly, strawberries. We also had supermarket icecream topping. Again, the children loved this idea.

Finally, we had this cake:



M wanted a chocolate cake with strawberries. It was the basic chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I doubled it. I then used the strawberry filling that Isa suggests for strawberry tall cakes (under the recipe for basic vanilla cupcakes, in the same book), which is basically strawberries with a little maple syrup, let sit for half an hour. I layered the cake with the macerated strawberries and vanilla "buttercreme". I topped it with more "buttercreme," fresh strawberries and some vegan chocolate sprinkles. The buttercreme is based on Rene's Vanilla Frosting from La Dolce Vegan. I used an extra 2/3 cup icing mixture, a good large pinch of salt and less vanilla. I find that the frosting is too soft if you follow the 2 cup recipe.

After a movie (Bedtime Stories) some children went home and some children stayed overnight for a sleepover. The sleepover crew had another movie and giggled and talked until 11pm. There will be several sleepy people in some Brisbane homes today!

M just typed "I loved it."