What do you do if you get a snow day (scratch that, two snow days) after a long winter break? And I’m not talking about a fun snow day when you can actually go outside and enjoy the sledding, skiing and anything else our wonderful Midwestern climate has to offer. No, I’m talking -50 windchill when a reasonable parent wouldn’t let their kids outside at all. So, getting a little cabin fever, we came up with an idea to throw a birthday party. That being the kids’ favorite thing, a birthday party got everyone’s spirits up and got our wheels turning. The birthday party was for our favorite stuffed animal, lovingly called Crumbs (because we all insist he was the one who ate all those chocolate chip cookies and left the crumbs). Our party plan was simple – wrap gifts, make a cake and decorations, and play fun party games.
Gifts
Since the holidays are over, we have plenty of wrapping paper in the house. There are also plenty of little knick-knacks lying around (and begging to be thrown out) – little plastic toys, mini candy canes, leftover yarn pieces, and small games you can play later at the party. Kids got armed with wrapping paper, child-friendly scissors and tape and got to wrapping. Bonus time – making cards to go with the gifts – great writing and drawing practice. I love how creative my kids got by coming up with gift ideas and cards, which is why it’s so helpful to have some structure to a project but also room for those little imaginations to fly.
Cake
I’ll admit, this dog cake has been on our minds for a long time, ever since my budding chef bought a cookbook at the book fair. It’s quite simple – no baking required, you just need a frozen pound cake, lots of frosting (vanilla and chocolate) and fruit leather or fruit slices, some M&Ms or skittles and a few straws. You’ll be amazed how many ingredients we already had in our pantry, but you can be creative and there are lot of possible substitutions. We used the recipe from the “Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, oh, my!” by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson.
Start by defrosting your pound cake (best to do it overnight in the fridge) or microwave for 30-40 seconds. Slice the front third for the head (slightly cut ends to taper) and 1 inch back for the tail (slice diagonally and use for tail). Use a few drinking straws (cut in half) to attach the head to the body – place the head piece at the front (slightly over the body) and push the straws through the head (where ears would be) to attach. Cut any extra straw that’s sticking out. I did the same with the tail (using one straw) right away, though the book advises you to place the tail at the end (when you pipe frosting).
Next, you’ll need to frost the cake. We used a small baking pan covered with tinfoil and a cooling rack on top, so the extra frosting will drip down. Microwave the vanilla and chocolate frosting (separately) for 20 seconds each. Then, spoon over the vanilla frosting all over the head, body and tail. After vanilla, use some chocolate frosting strategically – as stripes or dots. We weren’t perfect with our placement and definitely had a lot of fun trying and tasting leftovers. Note, you should have more than a can of vanilla – we ran out and had to use buttercream for one part of this project and vanilla for the other, so our dog looks like it’s playing in the snow, quite relevant for this weather. Now the cake is ready to be chilled for 30 minutes in the fridge.
Next step is to prepare the extras. We cut off halves from mini chocolate doughnuts (the book recommends mini brownies) for the feet. Put a little bit of frosting on the top, so they’ll attach to the body. We cut red fruit slices in half for the dog collar and we cut a triangle from the yellow fruit slice for the tag. We cut the purple fruit slice into a nose. Next, using one large marshmallow, we created dog ears. We sliced it in half, dipped the sticky side into pink sugar. Finally, we prepared the frosting for piping around the cake by placing vanilla and chocolate frosting into ziploc bags and cutting off the tip.
Once the cake was out of the fridge, we removed the rack with the cake, placed a fresh tinfoil sheet, then the feet and then gently sliced the cake onto the feet using a large soft spatula. We added the ears, nose, dog tag, collar, skittles for the eyes (attaching everything with frosting) and piped the frosting all around. Here’s our end result.
I’ll admit, my piping skills need work (adding to the list of resolutions), but it turned out fun – as if the dog is playing in the snow. One final touch was a a dog bowl. We simply dipped one of the mini doughnuts into vanilla frosting tinted with pink food coloring and added “dog food” (cheerios). I loved the recipe from this book and will definitely try more of these fun ideas. We sang Crumbs a birthday song and kids loved the results of their hard work.
Decorations
There are a few great reasons to make these garlands – our choice of decor. First, great practice for cutting, taping, and patience. Second, it’s time consuming so kids will be occupied for a good amount of time. Finally, they come up with their own concepts.
The process is simple – using construction paper – cut 1-inch (or wider) strips of paper. Put each into a circle and tape. Loop the next piece through and tape, on and on to form a garland. Place on the wall and your party is in session!
We had a lot of fun with the Crumbs dog day birthday on this snow day. How do you fight cabin fever?
