Birthday party

Molly's birthday party was this afternoon. It's the first formal birthday party she's ever had and it went great. Molly wisely chose to invite only a few good friends from the neighborhood, no new friends from school or anything, so the kids jumped right into playing together as if it was any ordinary afternoon ... well, an ordinary afternoon spiked with juice boxes and cupcakes.

Speaking of cupcakes, I was inspired by this fantastic blog post I read a while ago to stop going to all the trouble to make Molly's birthday cupcakes (and half-birthday cupcakes) from scratch and just buy them. I was all set to have a grocery store whip up the pink batter for us, but then I called the bakery and found out that they don't actually whip up batter and hence can't make a custom batch of pink for Molly. Their cupcakes come ready-made frozen and they just frost them. Eeeeeww. At that point I didn't feel like shopping around small bakeries to find one that actually bakes and then deal with the hassle of picking them up, etc. So yet again, I baked my own.

This time around I found a recipe for white cake (not yellow, which we learned last year turns orange rather than pink when red food coloring is added) and one that didn't involve lengthy whipping of egg whites and other complicated steps (learned that lesson on the half-birthday).

Pretty easy, pretty tasty and just fine for blowing out candles.

The birthday guests ...