4th birthday celebrations

On Thursday it was Charlie's 4th birthday. He's such a big boy now and it's lovely to see him interacting with his friends.

He's very shy in large groups (as we've found out at all the birthday parties we've attended recently) so we did lots of nice little things to keep him from getting overwhelmed. On Wednesday night we had tea and birthday cake with Nana and Grandad. C had helped Nana make the chocolate cake earlier in the day as he spends Wednesdays with them.

On Thursday we opened presents in the morning before nursery and then took in cakes for all his friends. We bought an M&S chocolate caterpillar and a vanilla dolly mixture cake and C got to eat the caterpillar's face as he was the birthday boy.

On Saturday we met up with Granny and Grandad, Uncle S, Aunty N and cousin I on the Watercress line steam railway and had a lovely day going up and down the railway and looking in at the engines being fixed in the engine shed. C even got to go into the signal box and pull down the levers to change the points. I made a steam train themed birthday cake which we had at the end of the day with a cup of tea whilst C opened his presents.

Today we had a bowling alley birthday party with 5 friends, 4 from nursery and cousin M who's just turned 3.

Charlie's 3rd Birthday - Cakes

Making birthday cakes for my son is something I take really seriously. My Mum used to make epic cakes for me, I had treasure chests, fairy toadstool houses and even a roller boot, and I want Charlie to have similar great birthday memories. Plus he won't be able to remember the early birthdays but we'll always have photos of him and his cake, so his memories of the first three birthdays will be solely created by the photos we've taken.

For his first birthday I made this hedgehog cake:

When he was two, I took the day off work to make him this Gruffalo cake:

He loves the Gruffalo, plus years before he was born I worked at Macmillan Children's Books, so the Gruffalo is a particularly special book for me. I wrote this 2nd birthday post last year.

So I needed to find something special for his third birthday. After doing some research on Pinterest (check out my Birthday Cake Ideas board) and flicking through some cookery books, I decided on a Dinosaur Chocolate Volcano Cake. I got the recipe from The Birthday Cake Book by Fiona Cairns (she made William and Kate's wedding cake!). The instructions looked complicated and the cake needed chilling time before sculpting it in the volcano shape, so this year I took two days off work.

The instructions were easy to follow, there were just loads of them. I made the grass with granulated sugar and green food colouring and the volcanic lava rocks with homemade cinder toffee (sticky but a brilliant home science lesson with syrup, sugar, white vinegar and bicarbonate of soda). The dinosaurs were supplied by Charlie (he picked his two favourites to sit next to the cake). The part that made it so spectacular was the indoor firework fountain in the centre. When we lit it Charlie's eyes went wide, he loved the erupting volcano. We had to wait for the sparkler to stop and then he could blow out the candles (his favourite part).

To add to the cake making this year I made a mini train cake for his actual birthday day. I hadn't planned to but on Sunday he turned to me and with real excitement said "and Mummy on my birthday on Wednesday I'll blow out three candles on my cake". Luckily Granny had given C some train shaped muffin moulds as an early birthday present, so I practised making the chocolate marble cake recipe and we had a mini train cake on the actual day. I had some gold cake glitter spray which worked really well on the galaxy minstrel wheels and the cake to make it look metallic.

 

Linking up for Mama Memoirs with Mandy @ A Sorta Fairytale: