There is a very important 3 year old (just turned 4) child in my life. She has spent some time on Pinterest selecting a birthday party theme.
Everything brightly colored was a noticeable theme including rainbow colors in her Pinterest pins. A rainbow cake was requested and I volunteered to make cheese cake rather than regular cake. Should I be using petroleum based food coloring? I made a quick dash to several nearby stores which should carry natural food coloring and when I could not find anything suitable I dashed back home and ordered this from Amazon. Yay! It arrived with one day to spare.
The colors are pretty enough before baking. For this cheese cake I used the Demarle Round Tray. Each opening holds 8 ounces, but I didn't even fill them up half way.
Raspberry (intended on red), yellow, blue ???,
Orange Green????? Lavender????
As you can see, the colors are not really turning out and after baking they were even more questionable. After baking, the green turned tan so we skipped using that one.
Fun balloons, yellow plates and purple table linen came from Sandy's U-Rent Party Store.
From around the house we gathered brightly colored objects to anchor the balloon centerpeice.
Interactive is always better, so the children added their own sprinkles...Naturally colored sugar sprinkles from Providence Fine Living.
I like the miniature size portions. Two small cheese cakes served 9 people with two pieces left over.
What effort! We don't fully appreciate it until we read the behind-the-scenes occurrences. And the 4-year old most certainly did not appreciate the effort at the time. (Sorry, but what can I do?!) It will probably be another 15 years or so before she does.
ReplyDeleteThat is silly about the natural food coloring not being the colors they were supposed to. Better go post a review on Amazon so somebody else is not unpleasantly surprised. Unless you think it had something to do with the type of batter, but that does not seem likely.
Well, the rest of us had a great time. Thanks for being a great Bonda!!
Love LW in SE WA
Hmmm...I can see this needed more explanation.
DeleteYes it is true the birthday cake did not meet expectations. It usually takes many years before birthdays measure up to what we think they should be. That's just part of the growing process or at least it was for me. It is just amazing how easy I am to please now at this late date.
The natural food coloring only had three colors. Yellow, red and blue. I had to do my best at mixing the other colors and it wasn't so great even though I did give it plenty of time and attention. I was least happy with the green.
I doubt it was meant for the natural food colorings to then be baked. Usually you would use food coloring for frosting, right? And that would not usually be baked afterward. So the blue is made from blueberries and it looked purplish. The red is made with raspberry so it looked dark pink no matter what I did. Another interesting thing is that I was taking the photos after dark and was not able to show the true color with the camera.
So yes, we did have a great time and I don't expect the 4 year old to be impressed. I'm well able to deal with it.
Probably I won't post a review on Amazon. I think the fact I mixed my own colors beyond the three that came and the fact that I baked it in the cheesecake batter alters things. If someone wants to search natural food coloring in cheese cake I imagine this blog will come up near the top of the search. :)