So, this is what I'm thinking…

So, my daughter had her seventh birthday on Friday night. She had about 15 thousand nine of her friends over for a “Master Chef” themed party. Each contestant got a custom apron with their name on it to take home. Th evening consisted of three challenges: Pizza, Shakes, and Cakes. The idea was that they’d make and eat their own party food. I’d be the judge and dish out praise or scorn as required.

For the Pizza Challenge, they paired up and were given a pizza base each, and access to 6-7 different pizza ingredients. We chose pizza-making because we figured everyone can make a pizza: you evenly spread a bunch of ingredients of a flat base and it should turn out alright in the end. Well,  either some of these girls were just not into making pizzas (or cooking in general) or had never laid eyes on a pizza and produced abominations with no thought or rhyme or reason. One of the pizzas had seven small piles of different ingredients in a ring around the centre. But, a couple of them were good with evenly placed ingredients and some garnishing.

Small problem was that our oven broke that morning. Luckily it was after the cupcakes and the all important birthday cake had been baked. So, when the pizzas were done I had to ferry them to a neighbor around the corner who cooked them for us and then I ferried them back. In the rain.

The Cupcake Challenge had them each decorate three or four cupcakes with M&Ms, sugary stars and whatnot. A bit of mess was made when the frosting was applied but generally I think they had fun doing this one.

For the Milkshake Challenge they went into teams of three and were each given a blender in which to concoct their creation. We figured we’d give them two themes: syrup flavours or fresh fruit/berries. So of course, most of the milkshakes had all ingredients thrown in with no thought about the taste. Those shakes were awful.

So, it wasn’t a bad night in the end. I DJed some party music; kids seem to love Beastie Boys “Intergalactic” and the Jamiroquai remixes I had on my MDs. We made far too much food so the good news is that I have enough pizza to last a week.  BLURP!