Butterfly party

My little girl Molly wanted a butterfly party for her sixth birthday so we used the summer's day to take over the garden with butterfly activities.

This week's blog is about the activities and food that I prepared for Molly and her little friends.

Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of the invites that I sent around, but I used a simple template to cut pretty card into butterfly shapes. We then wrote the details onto the back and used these to invite Molly's friends.

I wanted to make as much of the food based around the butterfly theme. I made sandwiches from jam and 100s & 1000s and cut the bread with a butterfly cutter. 

These little Cadbury's chocolate fingers were briefly dipped in hot water which melts the chocolate and allows you to stick a shape on. I found these icing butterflies in a supermarket, but you could use any edible sweet, or just dip them in sprinkles. This is a particularly fun job for your children to help with!

The cake-pops were my personal favourite. It was the first time I had attempted cake-pops and to this day I think they are my most successful. 

The cake-pops (pictured above) are chocolate with a white chocolate coating. To make them bake a chocolate cake, and once it is cooled crumble it up into fine crumbs before slowly adding chocolate butter icing until it sticks together firmly.

At this point I roll them into 3cm balls and freeze them. Once cold and firm remove them a few at a time from the freezer and dip 1cm of a lollypop stick into melted chocolate before inserting it into the centre of a cake-pop. Then dip the whole cake-pop into the melted chocolate and tap to remove any excess chocolate. Leave them to set on a sheet of baking paper, though if you have frozen your cake pops it won't take more than a few seconds for the chocolate to set.

I found little sugar-paper butterflies like this for £2.50 in a sugar-craft shop. The pack had 50 butterflies in. Once I cut them out I folded the butterfly and quickly rested it on the chocolate covered cake-pop (this must be done before the chocolate sets). Cake-pops are always a big hit with children!

Molly's cake was two large rectangle cakes that I cut into four wings. I iced each of the wings individually with fondant icing and then placed them all together.

To make the body I used more fondant icing and rolled it into disks that I then stuck together. The decoration is done using tubes of supermarket icing. I would suggest that at this point it is worth trying to get the decorations symmetrical. I have found that as I am right handed it was easier to decorate the left side first so I could see what I was copying when I did the right side. If I had decorated the right first my left arm would have covered over the pattern. Don't forget to reverse this if you are left handed!

On to the activities...

I know how much 6 year old girls love craft and so we spent some time making these lovely card butterflies that the girls decorated with felt pens. They are from Yellowmoon and cost £2.99 for 12. Once coloured we then hung them from the trees in the garden.

I also bought some butterfly wings that the girls made for themselves to wear. They were £13.50 for 15 wings from Baker Ross. These were so fun, and the girls loved making and wearing them. I left out tissue paper, jewels and other collage material and the girls did a great job of making them.





Finally we gave each little girl a little box of sweeties wrapped with a glow-in-the-dark butterfly necklace that I found again at Baker Ross . These were 6 for £2.99.

This party was a great success. Molly and her friends had a lovely couple of hours, the food all disappeared, the wings all decorated and the garden looked enchanted!