Zander's Penguin Party

Sunday was the big day for Zander's 5th birthday party...a penguin party! This one was so much fun to plan.

The Cake

For the big cake on top I used a half round dome shape cake pan to make an igloo shaped cake. The little door was made from a cupcake cut to resemble the entrance. I frosted it with a quick frosting (similar to 7-minute frosting). The next tier was easy...donut holes (snowballs), and the bottom tier had little cupcake mounds that were frosted to look like snow mounds or large snowballs.


The penguins are made out of olives, cream cheese and carrots. I will be posting a tutorial on how to make them sometime this week.

Here is a close up of the igloo cake. In the middle of the cake there was an ice cream center...which made choosing a frosting a little tricky. Normally I make a really yummy butter cream frosting, but since it had to live in the freezer due to the ice cream center, I didn't think the butter cream would hold up very well.

Here's Zander blowing out his candles...they were trick candles!

Igloo Cheese Ball

The other igloo I made was a cheese dip made from cream cheese, feta and pesto.

Cheesy Pesto Spread

Ingredients:

7 packages (8 oz. ea.) cream cheese, softened
13 oz. goat or feta cheese, at room temperature
2 small tubs prepared pesto sauce
Spray Soccer Ball Pan and 1 jumbo muffin cavity with vegetable pan spray; line with plastic wrap. In large bowl, beat cream cheese with electric mixer until creamy. Add goat cheese; continue beating until smooth.
Press about 3/4 cup cheese mixture into prepared muffin cup. Press 1 cup cheese mixture onto bottom of soccer ball pan; spread cheese mixture around pan edges to 1 1/2 in. thickness. Spoon pesto sauce from one container into pan. Add second container of pesto to remaining cheese mixture. Scoop pesto cheese on top of pesto layer. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight. Unmold onto serving plate. Serve with crackers

Zander wanted to make sure we had fish crackers too...because "penguins eat fish."

Ice Cream Snow Balls

The Happy Feet Penguin pinata is guarding the ice cream snowballs. I just pre-scooped all the vanilla ice cream and rolled them into balls, then in coconut. Brrrr. It makes my hands cold just thinking about it, but boy were they good!

One happy/messy birthday boy!
10 happy party goers (not all pictured)

Decorations

I set up the dining room to look like a cold winter wonderland, just the kind of place where a penguin would want to hang out! I hung small snowflakes from the dining room light...and large snowflakes from the ceiling. Then I used an icicle border along the chair rail. The centerpiece was a baby penguin stuffed animal with some fake snow, fake snowballs and fake ice.

Now that the party is over I'm going to leave up the decorations for a while. These snowflakes were purchased at the Dollar store and are huge. I think I will use them as chargers/place mats under our Christmas plates after I take them down.

Activities and Games

For a craft project I found these snow globe sticker scenes at Oriental Trading and they turned out so cute.


My son came up with the games for the party. In the picture they are having a relay race with "eggs" (balloons) between their legs as they waddle to one end of the room and then back. The next game involved dancing like Mumble from Happy Feet. I borrowed the Happy Feet soundtrack from the library and we played a fun up beat song...when the music stopped all the kids had to freeze. This was the most fun and some of the kids had some pretty great moves...very entertaining!

Party Favors

For party favors we passed out penguin snow globes. The penguin drawstring bags were used to put the candy in from the pinata.