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| Home Made Birthday Cake - No Box Cake Here! |
My daughter turned 10 this week. Crazy how time flies by. We are still in the moment of wanting a birthday party and I'm at the moment in my life where I really don't want to plan one and I certainly don't want to pay for one. I talk her into a sleep over at home for a few friends. We custom make her invites, I decide to use only what's on hand for the celebration and outside of buying the birthday gift, we'll have down home home made birthday party.
Before I know it, I'm planning an overnight for 13 girls. I tell myself, I'm okay with this. We'll get through this and it won't be so bad. Meanwhile, my husband makes arrangements to spend most of the evening in our room watching TV and my son, luckily scores a friends birthday invite party for the same night.
It's an early out day at school and it's raining, so even though we are only 4 houses away from school, we have to pick the girls up with the suburban. We have an early snack/dinner - Pizza! I made the dough in my bread maker. While the two large cheese pizzas are in the oven we start on the cake. This is touted as one of the highlights of the party...making the cake, so sporadically in between hiding and seeking, the girls help me make the cake. A chocolate fudge cake. After the pizza and loads of dress up, two girls decide it's enough and they are done with the party and they want to go home. This is before three other girls are yet to arrive and before the cake. I don't know if these girls are going to miss something or are wise beyond their years.
We are missing just one party girl when it becomes obvious to most of the girls that the cake is almost done and they come into the kitchen to the smell of something chocolatey which of course must be good. The pressure is on for that cake. I keep asking them to wait but it becomes apparent that will not be possible so we forge ahead with the cake and agree no present opening till our last guest arrives.
I cut the cake into two equal sections and decorate it quickly with whipped cream - 1 carb per tablespoon! Quickly we put on recycled birthday candles, you know the ones you can't quite throw away from all the years past. I put them on, we magically have 10. We sing happy birthday and they literally dig into that cake. It's gone...within minutes with a little brownie bite size left for our last guest. Okay....that was good. Our last guest arrives, has the rest of the cake and we are on with the rest of the party.
We play a little Pictionary, a little more dress up and make up and then we convince them we can watch a movie and I'll rent one from On Demand. We chose "Blended" with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. The kids loved it and watched it, the whole time. Meanwhile we go through 10 bags of microwave popcorn. As the movie comes to an end, I'm asked for vegetables, carrots or celery sticks with peanut butter. We are out of the celery but have tons of carrots. I do several and slice them up in thick julienne style pieces. I'm proud of them for wanting something other than pizza!
They play some more, it's getting late. I hear from some of the girls that a few have fallen asleep. Others are making a video together, having a blast. It's now almost 11 PM. They are hungry again. I have a few more pizza dough rounds left. I offer pizza. Pepperoni and Cheese this time. It's ready by 11:30 and they settle into watching a free movie - The Tooth Fairy and have moved all the sleepover things into the living room and it's apparent to me this is where the sleep will occur.
I make it to the end of the movie and the teeth brushing for most...and back to the floor in the living room with the lights out and TV off and I fall asleep to the chatter of 1/2 the girls as the other 1/2 have managed to sleep.
In the morning, I wake up on my own. It's 7 am. My daughter wanted me to make beignets which I had just learned how to make last week, followed up by homemade doughnuts, which I've NEVER made, but the bread machine has a recipe for the dough so I'll try.
I decide to do the doughnut dough first and that was a good call because it will be an hour and half before it's done in the machine and then would need to rise for 40 minutes, be shaped and rise for another 40 before I can even fry them. Most of the girls will likely be gone before I even start doing the doughnuts. I make the beignets.
They are so much quicker and relatively LOW CARB! To me anything that is under 25 carbs for a meal is low carb on my maintenance plan. When I'm trying to lose weight it's 12 carbs a meal or less staying under 50 carbs a day. Most people eat 370 carbs a day so any reduction will help someone eat considerably less. I've been doing a low carb lifestyle since Sept of 2013 and I've lost a total of 50 lbs. There is only 1/2 cup of flour in the recipe. The recipe makes 24 beignets. Here is the carb break down:
1/2 cup flour - 46 carbs
2 tsp sugar - 8 carbs
2 eggs - 2 carbs
1 tsp vanilla extract - .5 carbs
1 tsp of powdered sugar - 2.5 (per three beignets)
Total Carbs - 59 / 3 per beignets - a serving of 3 beignets - 7.3 carbs!
I was greeted with various looks of "What is that!?" when I served them for breakfast. I don't believe any of the girls had tried beignets. But after the first first round they wanted more. I made 3 batches of beignets in the time it took the doughnut dough to finish in the bread machine.
We did eventually do the doughnuts, with just 4 girls left, and they disappeared before I could take a picture. I have a feeling I'll be making those more often, and maybe I'll make those into gifts - they looked pretty awesome. I have to admit the experience of making the doughnuts and all the GREASE that they need to fry, I don't know if I'll ever have one again. Well, maybe just one. Carbs in one glazed doughnut is 22. I'm actually able to have one.
All in all, it was a pretty awesome birthday party...something we likely should have been doing for birthdays all along.
In the new year, I'm going to start experimenting with low carb bread and dessert recipes as well as lots of one pot meals as I try to get my kids used to stews - with all the fresh, homemade bread I'll be making!
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