An 80th Birthday Party!

My mother in law turned 80 this year, so we (me and my husband and my sister in law and brother in law) threw her a party. We started working on the details back in April and came up with doing a brunch on my sister in law and brother in law’s patio. (She has an absolutely gorgeous backyard which is a lovely setting for a party.)

It’s hot and really humid here during July, so we decided that we would have to have a tent, but they are really expensive to rent and in short supply, and the last time they tried to use a tent, the rental company wouldn’t put it where they wanted it, so my husband and I bought one. It’s a 20 x 40 and has sides with windows. We bought it from aosom.com. It arrived in May and we didn’t take it out of the box until this past Saturday. There are a LOT of pieces and my husband even resorted to reading the directions–more than once! We put the tent up on Saturday, hoping to help keep things cool on Sunday morning.

My sister in law has some really pretty black and white toile table toppers, so we decided to use pink flowers in mercury glass vases for the centerpieces. These vases look fancy, but I made them with inexpensive clear glasses vases from the thrift store and mirror paint. You can find the instructions here https://www.hgtv.com/design/make-and-celebrate/handmade/diy-mercury-glass . I ordered the roses and alstromeria from Costco because I also needed an arrangement for my mother’s birthday. The rest of the flowers came from the grocery here. I especially love the pink mums with the green tips.

For the menu, we did a pretty typical brunch menu: Egg casseroles (2 with bacon, onions, shitake mushrooms, and Jarlsberg cheese and one with kale, red pepper, onion, and Jarlsberg Cheese. I put Boursin cheese in the egg mixture and some fresh thyme in there too.); fruit salad; hashbrown casserole; fresh sliced tomatoes; banana bread; blueberry muffins and gluten free zucchini bread.

For drinks we had ice water on each table and had a bar set up with coffee (we had no takers because it was terribly hot); orange juice; prosecco; mimosas; and blood mary’s. We always get some help for our parties from a local company called Black Tie Affair. If you are going to have a large party, I highly recommend a company like this. It allows you to keep your food and beverage costs under control, and still be able to enjoy your party. (In fact, I won’t have a big party without them.) Unfortunately for our bartender, the drink table was in the sun and it was hot.

We knew we weren’t going to have any extra seats, so we decided that we needed to have place cards on the table and wanted to do something cute, but also something that wouldn’t blow away. So I made little jars of mixed berry jam from the frozen mixed berries that they sell at Costco (I’ve shared this information on the blog). It may sound like a LOT of work, but it only took 2 hours from start to finish. We put names on large white gift tags and tied them on with thin gold cord.

The last big detail was a cake that was appropriate for an 80th birthday party. My mother in law likes lemony and also fruit desserts and I found a recipe for a lemon blueberry buttermilk cake with cream cheese icing. You can find the recipe here https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/lemon-blueberry-layer-cake/ I personally find that you can overwhelm a cake with cream cheese icing and the layers for the cake were only about an inch tall, so instead of icing, I put blueberry jam between the layers. Since the layers were so thin, I ended up making two batches of cake and used 5 of the 6 layers. To assemble the cake, I put the first cake layer on the cardboard round and piped a “dam” of cream cheese icing around the edge and then piped the jam inside the cream cheese icing. I used an offset spatula to spread the jam very thin so as not to overwhelm the flavor of the cake. Fortunately my oldest son was home and he helped me put the layers on with his really large hands–the cake is very tender and breaks easily. Once all five layers were on, then it was time to frost the outside with cream cheese icing. You have to make this icing using room temperature butter and cream cheese so it is really soft. I piped it on (I was trying to avoid having any blueberry from the cake come through the icing), and then used a scraper to get a smooth coat. If you are going to decorate cakes, I highly recommend a turntable which makes it easier to scrape the sides to get a smooth finish on your icing. At this point, I put it in the refrigerator because I was worried about the icing slumping.

I knew that roses made from cream cheese icing would never last in the heat, so I mixed up some marshmallow fondant last weekend and played with it. (You can find the recipe here https://www.biggerbolderbaking.com/how-to-make-marshmallow-fondant) I wasn’t satisfied with my results, so I asked my son and husband to try their hand at making fondant roses, and they did a remarkable job, especially since they refused to watch the YouTube video on how to make them. I added vines and leaves to the cake and placed the roses on top.

It was a really nice party and didn’t get too hot until it was over–then the race was on to get the tent down before the rain came. We made it with 10 minutes to spare!