On Children’s Parties

On Children’s Birthday Parties

The Tiny Saint turned two. His first birthday passed in a haze; I was too dazed and confused to do much more than make a small peach tart and my indomitable mother-in-law took care of the rest, organising a party of aged and devoted aunties in the garden, who were fed on endless variations of her beloved pasta sfoglia(Italian puff pastry which she makes into a million mini parcels filled with everything from speck and grilled aubergine to cauliflower cheese). They make for excellent child and invalid fare; soft, salty, and easy on the teeth.

Two felt significant enough, however, for me to want to take matters into my own hands. And, thankfully, I have a bit more energy and enthusiasm to do so, now that nights have become slightly less traumatic. I have also finally bit the bullet and bought a new oven, which does not burn every cake I make. It’s hideous, but it works. All excellent reasons to celebrate, apart from the obvious fact that James has now bypassed the newborn phase and is officially a toddler. And life has just become much more interesting.

Now, I know what the general format of children’s parties look like here in Italy, and I remember from my youth and from looking back at photos that in my childhood they usually involved Party Rings and Skips on colourful cardboard plates. My mum usually made a cake resembling our current craze, a green football pitch for my brothers, a white cat with pink nose, surrounded by sugar mice for me. I still remember the tiny tube of blue icing she used for the cat’s eyes. It looked like toothpaste, and I used to steal it from the cupboard and squeeze it directly into my mouth. 

I remember so clearly these birthday parties past; I remember the smell of the shoes at the bowling alley, their clown-like colours, clumping around on heavy ice skates at Plymouth pavilions and crashing into the barriers. I remember the taste of the cake they made at the Superbowl, so delightfully sweet and artificial, compared to my my mum’s cakes which tasted of butter. I remember plates of orange Whatsits. I still love the concept of crisps on a plate.

But, for this birthday, I decided to do it different. The years for colourful crassness will come, and I await them eagerly. For me, there is no such thing as a bad birthday. I can’t wait for the Italian equivalent of Lazer quest and the dry ski slope and the Pizza Hut buffet (we went mad for the Thousand Island Dressing and the Bacon Bits). There is nothing like an idyllic country childhood to make you appreciate all the joys of the Industrial Estate outside Plymouth.

This birthday was also a chance to invite people to a party as our house is too small to accommodate any more than two, so I wanted it to be a party that would be nice for the adults too.

So, having never planned a children’s party before I threw myself into the task at hand with all the enthusiasm of the amateur, and invited everyone I knew in the area. Along with the aforementioned aged rellies this took numbers up to 60, which was rather more than I had expected, and many more than I like to comfortably cater for.  My ideal ‘event’ is maximum 40, and my ideal intimate supper is about 10, and I know well from my (chaotic) catering days that making anything delicious for numbers more than 40 is seriously challenging. Especially if you want to make hot food, and more especially still if you want to make any kind of starch (ie pasta or risotto). I refuse – on principle – to make pasta for more than about 6, and risotto for about 2, because I just don’t think I am capable of making it really, properly nice for any more than that. My idea of a good plate of pasta or risotto is so specific to the way I make it, in a certain pan with a certain depth and circumference etc, that if I have to make it any other way I know the result will be disappointing. The difference between an exceptional plate of pasta or risotto and an average one is so slight, and the attention to detail so rigorous, that I wouldn’t want to set myself the challenge. Chefs and cooks more talented than I will say differently, I’m sure.

So, to feed 60 people? Lorenzo, being male and Sardinian (nothing like a double generalisation) is a big fan of the open-air grill, meaning in true Sardinian style a large wood fire on the ground over which you throw a few rudimentary metal grills on which sizzle various bits of meat, fish or vegetables. I am also a big fan of this way of cooking as it involves no washing up, tastes delicious and creates a good – what the Italians call – scena, or what we might describe as ‘ambience’. Nothing says festa in Sardinia like fire. But we are also talking mid-July on ground where it hasn’t rained for 3 months and even a flake of cigarette ash can cause entire hillsides to go up in smoke. With news of a huge forest fire just down the road, we decided it would be irresponsible to light one, especially as we were borrowing the party venue (a lavender field) from a friend of the family, whose living is derived entirely from his lovely, oily and very flammable lavender. 

So, no fire, and no kitchen on site, and only a tiny camp fridge in which to store things. The challenges were mounting. I decided, as every good hostess knows, to keep things painfully simple. A big grain salad of some variety, local pecorino, salami, pane carasau and then a selection of bruschetta, perfect finger food, perfect to make ahead and top at the last minute, and perfect for kids, I hoped (my son is the first to tip all the toppings off and just eat the salty, oil-soaked bread, but it doesn’t stop me trying to make delicious, healthy toppings). Then, of course, there must be cake.

I fully intend to make cakes in the shape of Crabs, cars and anything else which proves to be Santino’s current fancy, but seeing as he is too young to notice, and I was keeping things simple, I opted for two types of lemon cake (because he does actually like lemon cake, praise be. He doesn’t like chocolate cake, and spurned my stepmother’s Colin Caterpillars. What have a I spawned?!). One blueberry lemon drizzle, for the kids, and one Zucchini lemon yoghurt cake, for the adults. For 60, a tray cake would have been practical, but to me a cake is round, just as a pizza is round, otherwise I feel a glitch in the matrix. So I bought two enormous round cake tins from the wonderful Gregory store and quadrupled each recipe. They worked! Always a huge relief. Once cooked, I froze them – one in my mother-in-law’s freezer, one in mine, so I had more time on the day to do all of the various ferrying necessary. The freezer can help on such occasions, especially as the Tiny Saint also needs fulltime attention as he is no longer at nursery, and won’t start again until September, so all prep was snatched between the usual chaos of cooking and cleaning up 3 meals a day for him and all the other business of life.

I spent an entire morning slicing and roasting bread, and developed ‘bruschetta cutter’s blisters’, a previously unknown affliction, and then wrapped the crisp oily slices in a million layers of greaseproof and tin foil. Then I made various toppings; hummus, courgette and ricotta pesto (to put alongside the classic tomato and basil) which I put in tubs in the freezer.

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However, I broke my own rule and chose Fregola for the salad. Now I know from many previous occasions that fregola makes a great salad, cooked and cooled and tossed with plenty of oil and lemon and lots of other good things. But this time I was in a rush, and I brought my largest saucepan of water to a boil and threw in 6 packs of fregola. I saw at once my mistake, the water became so milky it looked like glue, and the fregola stuck together in great clumps. I smelled burning at the bottom, and watched the pan bubble white liquid and lumps of fregola for a few minutes before realising there was nothing I could do to help the situation and deciding to take it off the heat and run it under cold water to get rid of some of the starch. I rinsed that fregola about ten times, in batches, because my colander is small. It was still starchy (and also now insipid as I had rinsed all the salt off) and al dente but in a chewy, starchy way and as far as I was concerned, totally inedible. I had no choice but to proceed. In went about a litre of homemade olive oil, which did little to rectify the situation. The juice of 6 lemons and a handful of salt didn’t help much either. Then the two trays of roasted vegetables. Now I had a slimy, sour, stodgy pile of cold pasta. A disaster in edible form.

Reader, I served it anyway.

As the day of the party dawned, I tested my meticulously wrapped bruschetta (no longer crisp and delicious but essentially stale bread) and my foul fregola and after a few hot tears realised that actually it really didn’t matter, because despite all of my pretentious guff and professional angst, sometimes the food is also just the food. And the cheese (not made my me but made by these guys) was excellent, as were the crisps (my one concession on this occasion to the classic food of kid’s parties, because there must ALWAYS be crisps). And the wine was free and flowing, and the cakes were squidgy and syrupy and lemony and creamy and just how I want cakes to be. The cake decoration was last minute as anything done beforehand would have melted/wilted in the 36 degree heat (and obviously the giant cakes didn’t fit in my tiny fridge), so I went full Meghan Markle and threw on edible flower sprinkles over the lemon and blueberry drizzle for the kids (on top of its white lemon glaze) and then some foraged blackberries on the zucchini cake (with its white yoghurt cream). One candle in each and suddenly it was a birthday. Simple, but effective.

The pale violet backdrop of the lavender field was perfect, and its scent mingled with the meaty manure tang of a nearby cowshed, and we made a little creche under the olive trees where the kids bickered over bikes and wielded small furtive punches at each other. And there was a wooden swing and the hum of the bees and the flutter of butterflies and then at 9 ocolock sharp, just as Lorenzo’s painfully mounted solar-powered fairy lights came a plague of mosquitoes descended upon us, and everyone ran to their cars, squaling their excuses and swatting wildly at their poor exposed heads.

The Panda proved herself once again the world’s most useful car with her roof rack to load up all the gifts (including giant inflatable jet ski) and Bechamel wore her best bow and most hangdog expression the whole time. And no one even mentioned the fregola, or the slightly stale/slightly soggy briuchetta. And the Tiny Saint was deliriously happy and confused the entire time, which is surely all one could ask for from one’s birthday. 

So, lessons learned, sometimes you just have to let you standards slide a little, and realise that a really good party is a lot about the place and the people, and a really good birthday party is a lot about the person you celebrate, and we were lucky on all fronts, because the place was quite beautiful and the people are great and this small person we have grown ourselves is – if I say so myself – something pretty special.

And here is the recipe for the Blueberry Lemon Drizzle and Zucchini Lemon Yoghurt Cake.

(I actually did 5 times this to feed 30-40)

2 eggs

200 ml (7 fl oz/scant 1 cup) plain yoghurt

60 ml (2 fl oz/1/4 cup) whole milk

60 ml (2 fl oz/1/4 cup) neutral oil, such as sunflower oil

220 g (8 oz/1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) sugar

zest of 1 large lemon

150 g (51/2 oz/1 cup plus2 tablespoons) plain (all-purpose) or 00 flour

100 g (31/2 oz/3/4 cup) semola

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

A handful of fresh or frozen blueberries

FOR THE DRIZZLE:

40 g (11/2 oz/31/4 tablespoons) sugar

juice of 1/2 lemon

Preheat the oven to 160oC fan (180oC/350oF). Grease a round 23 cm (9 in) cake tin (pan) and line with baking parchment.

Whisk the wet ingredients together in a bowl. Combine

all the dry ingredients in a separate bowl, then gently whisk the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until you have a smooth batter. Stir in the blueberries.

Pour into the prepared tin. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Remove from the oven.

To make the drizzle, combine the sugar and lemon juice in a small saucepan and heat gently to dissolve. Add the blossom of a couple of heads of elderflower (shake them from their stems), then pour over the cake. Allow to cool completely before serving.