The cake lasted eleven minutes on the patio before it started to slide.
It was 11:40 on Saturday morning, 97 degrees in the shade of the live oak, and the light blue buttercream I'd piped around the top was slowly heading south. Wyatt saw it first, said "Uh oh," and carried the whole thing back into the kitchen like a waiter with a tray of drinks. So we sang to Rosie in the kitchen, in two shifts, because twenty people don't fit around our island. She didn't mind at all. She was almost three, and there was a cake with blueberries on it, which was all she'd asked for.
The plan: morning, outside, simple
Rosie's birthday lands in the hottest stretch of a Dallas summer, so we held the party from 10 to 12:30, before the backyard turns into a griddle. The guest list was family and the street: the five of us, my mom and Gary, Kristen and Ryan with Cody and Avery, the Nguyens and their two girls, and all five Garzas. Mrs. Patterson came over for cake and went home with a plate. Ron and Debbie called on video right as we sang, and Rosie showed them the cake up close, very close, until the phone had frosting on it.
The entertainment was the sprinkler, a kiddie pool, a bucket of sidewalk chalk and a big tub of homemade bubble solution (dish soap, water and a little corn syrup). Avery, who is a teenager and far too cool for all of this, ran the bubble station for an hour and loved every minute.
One quieter milestone: Rosie potty trained in July, and she made it through her whole party, sprinkler and all, without a single accident. Nobody else noticed. I noticed.
What we served
- Hot dogs on the Weber, run by Matt with Wyatt as his assistant
- Fruit cups of watermelon, grapes and blueberries, cut and filled Friday night and kept cold on sheet pans in the fridge
- Chips
- Lemonade and a cooler of water
- The cake
Rosie picked the cake herself. When I asked what kind she wanted, she said "blue with blueberries," and she has never wavered on a decision in her life. So it was two 9-inch vanilla layers with a blueberry filling (a pint of berries cooked down with a spoonful of sugar and a little cornstarch), light blue buttercream and a ring of fresh blueberries on top. I baked the layers Friday at 6 a.m. while the kitchen was still cool, the only time the oven went on all week.
Cody, in the middle of preseason practices for his senior season, ate four hot dogs. Eli ate two plain hot dogs, no buns, and a fruit cup with the watermelon picked out. Rosie ate exactly one bite of hot dog and her weight in blueberries.
What I skipped
No goody bags. No piñata. No character plates, no balloon arch, no bounce house (I priced one at $165 for the morning, which is about twice the whole party). No bakery cake. We had plain paper plates left from the Fourth of July, so we used those. Not one child under five asked where the goody bags were, and several parents looked quietly relieved.
The $85
- Hot dogs, four packs: $13.96
- Buns, four packs: $5.56
- Toppings (relish, onions, shredded cheese): $4.80
- Fruit cups (two watermelons, 3 pounds of grapes, two pints of blueberries, cups and spoons): $23.82
- Chips, three bags: $6.57
- Cake (butter, powdered sugar, eggs, milk, a pint of blueberries, gel coloring): $17.25
- Lemonade and three bags of ice: $9.15
- Napkins and a number-3 candle: $3.89
That's $85.00 even, about $4.25 a person. Flour, sugar, ketchup, mustard and the leftover plates came out of the pantry and aren't counted, which I'll admit is generous bookkeeping.
My one real lesson is the cake. Buttercream is mostly butter, and butter at 97 degrees does what butter does. Next August the cake stays inside until the candles are lit, or I make a frosting that can stand the heat. The blue gel coloring, meanwhile, stayed on Rosie's hands, chin and favorite shirt until Monday.
On Sunday, her actual birthday, she woke up and asked if it was her party again. It wasn't, but there were blueberry pancakes, and she decided that counted.
