Isabelle's Purplicious Party, Part 3 (and final!)

I'm going to end my Purple Party Series on the food. Of course, food is so important to any party. And I have to re-iterate one of my soap boxes. A cake can be pretty, but if it doesn't taste good, what's the point? Oddly, I have strong opinions on this for grown up parties and weddings, but not so much for kid parties, because kids really don't care and aren't that picky when it comes to desserts.

We ordered Cane's Chicken fingers, because Cane's is amazing, and what kid doesn't love Chicken fingers? I fancied it up with little wooden food skewers I found at Meyers and attached tiny little paper flags to them with a glue stick! I cut up veggies and utilized one of my cupcake tiers for serving. Grace and I also made fruit skewers, which turned out nice, and I made some homemade salsa (because I have a garden overflowing with tomatoes!)and Mexican layer dip.


I usually put the Mexican dip in a 9x13 metal pan to bake until melty, but I thought I'd get fancy and put it into my trifle bowl. I waited until my Grandma arrived and asked her if I could bake in my trifle bowl. Sadly, she said no, so I ended up microwaving the concoction for fifteen or twenty minutes on 50% and since all of the ingredients are already cooked, it just needed warming up and melted, it turned out surprising well!


For the beverage I got this beverage dispense for $9 at Target (after I exchanged the one I bought last year that didn't work TWICE) I mixed 7 up and a tub of raspberry sherbet. It was pink, so I added purple food coloring..wah la! I also got some fancy bottles of purple and green soda's for the grown ups.


Well, I have to talk about the cupcakes for a minute. I used my good ole' faithful Martha Stewart Cupcake Book, which has gotten me through many birthdays and celebrations and rarely disappoints. I made the classic yellow buttermilk cupcake and the devil's food cupcake and topped them both with my all time favorite Swiss Meringue Butter cream frosting. Ohhhh I LOVE this frosting. It's not at all sweet, but requires a full POUND of butter for every batch. So it is super rich and is very firm so it makes for great decorating. I also have to say that it's heart stopping as it tends to separate before it comes together, which always makes me think I am going to have to make a last minute trip to the Grocery Store for a canned substitute!




I topped these cupcakes with chocolate butterflies. It really wasn't as hard as it seems, although the white chocolate that I colored purple was difficult to melt and very delicate and prone to breaking because of all of the additives I put into it in order to get it to melt! I basically downloaded a butterfly coloring page from the Internet, melted the chocolate, and put it into a little bottle, I then folded a piece of wax paper in half and taped it on top of the picture. I then traced the picture with the chocolate. Then I folded a piece of card stock in half and laid the chocolate butterfly down and put it into the fridge to harden. It lifted up from the wax paper as it got cold and lifted easily from the paper. I kept them on a plate and in the freezer overnight until I assembled them the next day. They turned out beautiful!