Butterfly Party Food - from Kiwicakes test kitchen

Last month our wee girl Indie turned 4. She's into all little insects, bugs (and even slugs!) so we ran with a butterfly party theme. This is her cake and it is followed by plenty of plenty of sweet treat ideas below...

As I do with all my kids parties, I popped a keyword into the Kiwicakes Quick Find box for decorating inspiration. The search "butterfly" currently brings up 41 varied products to enhance cakes and parties. Our party table was full of edible fluttering beauties.

These ever-popular honey rice bubble cakes were made by my mum. Bless! The mini butterflies on top look like they are ready to take off. They were made the day before with thinly rolled pink fondant (with a pinch of tylose worked in) stamped out with a mini plunger cutter, sprinkled ever so lightly with some pink glitter and set to dry resting in a v-shape overnight. Like all pink/purple fondants remember to keep these in a dark place away from fading UV light. Shoe boxes are great for fondant decorations as they are dark yet they still breathe. The sparkly butterflies were adhered with a wee dab of electric pink coloured royal icing just before serving. Royal icing can also be made, coloured and refrigerated in a piping bag in advance.

These pretty cookies are a basic chocolate biscuit base shaped with a butterfly plunger cutter. Coloured fondant was plunged with the wing design and adhered to each baked cookie with sugar glue. Again these can be made in the days leading up to the party.

Here's a twist on regular fairy bread - just use the same butterfly plunger cutter as for the cookies above. It makes a nicely sized item for small hands!  Lightly butter soft white toast slice bread and dip into/sprinkle over non pareils of your choice. You will get 4-5 butterflies per slice of bread. To stay fresh these must be assembled right before serving so enlist some help! I know I am mad but I proudly save the crusts and trimmings so later on I can turn them into an easy and colour-spiked bread and butter pudding with currants and zesty lemon that everybody loves. Yum.

These winged beauties were made on the morning of the party. All you need is a bag of pretzels, a bag of pascall clinkers, a wee bit of melted chocolate in a disposable piping bag and some edible bling! This is best achieved as a 2 person job as you need to work quickly while the chocolate is still warm. Kids loved seeing the surprise colour inside the chocolate clinker and the pretzels added to the savoury mix on a very sweet-laden table offering.

Inside the birthday cake I electrified my everyday cake batter by marbling 3 coloured batter portions. I used a wee squirt of gel colours electric yellow, electric blue and electric pink and swirled them with a cake tester before baking. I made a double mix to fill a round and a square tin. The butterfly torso was 1/3 of the square cake and the remainder was cut in half for the top wing shapes. The bottom larger wings were two halves of the circle.

To crumb coat the butterfly body and wings I made a ganache using 2 Cadbury blocks (so 440g dairy milk chocolate) chopped and added into 180ml almost boiling cream. The fondant-covered cake was decorated with flowery panels utilising my floral impression mat set and topped off with pastel coloured share-pack mini mentos lollies.