Army Party: Camouflage Birthday Cake & Cupcakes

I'm not a precision cake decorator, by any means. Birthday cakes for me need to be deceptively simple - the best ones look impressive but are actually straightforward and easy to do.

When Dash requested an Army Party, I was racking my brains trying to figure out what birthday cake I could make to suit - until I spotted the brilliant gummy Army Men lollies on KiwiCakes website. Suddenly I knew what I could do - a battlefield cake. My old fallback-in-a-roasting dish, a nice big rectangular cake canvas, on which to create an edible work of art.

I was already planning to make camouflage cupcakes, but a genius friend suggested making the birthday cake camo on the inside too. Again, deceptively simple. Here's how to do it...

Bake the Cake:

To fill the roasting dish, bake a double batch of your favourite butter cake recipe, or use this one I've doubled for you already:

3 cups of high grade flour
6 teaspoons of baking powder
2 cups of white sugar
1 cup of milk
4 eggs
250g butter, melted
2 teaspoons of vanilla

Beat all ingredients on high with an electric mixer for five minutes.
Then...

1. Separate the mixture into three bowls and add a dash of gel food colouring* to each: Projel Khaki, Leaf Green and Black (with a tablespoon or two of cocoa powder added to the black bowl as well)
2. Place spoonful blobs of each colour randomly into a well greased (or lined) roasting dish
3. Continue until all the mixture is used up and bake for 25-30 minutes at 180oC or until cake springs back when lightly touched

*gel colouring must be used if you want your cake to have the vivid colours; regular food colouring will turn out dull and disappointing once baked. You can find professional grade gel colours on the KiwiCakes website

Once the cake has cooled, it's time to Decorate the Cake...

Mix up a double batch of buttercream frosting and separate into three bowls; Add a dash of gel colour to each bowl: leaf green (for the grassy areas), khaki (for a clay effect) and black with a little cocoa powder added to the black bowl for the dark mud base.

You will also need to have kept aside three camo cupcakes (see below) to create the knobbly hill. To decorate you'll need some mini flake bars, licorice straps and gummy army men lollies.

Separate the licorice straps into thin strips using your fingernail; this will become the "barbed wire" for your trench.

Create your battlefield layout: (1) Cut the tops off two cupcakes and arrange the three of them into a hill in one corner of your rectangle cake. (2) Dig out a shallow "trench" on the opposite end of your cake with a knife (you can see the camouflage effect inside the cake *yay*)

Using a rubber spatula, apply the darkest colour frosting to the inside of the trench and its neighbouring cake edge, and to secure the cupcake hill and "cliffs"

Now comes the part where you can be artistic

1. "Paint" and "sculpture" your battle field with the buttercream frosting. 
2. Use the khaki "clay" colour for the sides of the hill and around the edges of the trench; put the green grass colour on last, but then mess it up a little with the clay in spots - it is a battle field after all... no golf course grass here!
3. Using a rubber spatula gives you great control and it goes on quickly. 
4. Layer up the colour to create depth and texture (aerial view)
5. The "cliffs" side view - see how textured and random the layering is, but it creates a real sense of depth

Now you get to have fun adding in the details. Position your army men on the battlefield (cut the legs off before placing them in the trench); wind the "barbed wire" around slivers of flake bar "logs"; scatter flake bar crumbs around the edges of the trench for added texture

Lastly, I added a "flag" on top of the hill, and candles. 

AT THE PARTY (Overhead on the way to lighting the candles): "Hey come on! Come check out this epic cake!" Yep, our platoon of 11-year olds were impressed...

... and inside, a camo surprise!

Camouflage Cupcakes

After all that you should find making the camo cupcakes, super-easy! Use your favourite recipe or mine (found here); mine makes 12-15 cupcakes. Double it if you need more than this (remember to keep three cupcakes back for your "hill".

1. Use the three gel colours as before: Projel Khaki, Leaf Green and Black 
2. Separate the mixture in three bowls - for the cupcakes I actually had four colours, but three works better, I realised in hindsight.
3. Add your gel colours to each bowl of mixture (with a tablespoon or two of cocoa powder added to the black bowl as well)

Line the cupcake tins with plain cupcake papers (remove these later and put them in your fancy wrappers; if you bake the cupcakes in your fancy wrappers, they will lose their colour and go yucky. very disappointing.

1. Add a small blob of khaki mixture to each cupcake liner with a teaspoon
2. Add a blob of each other colour to your cupcake liners
3. Keep adding mixture colours randomly until all the mixture is used up.

Then, you bake them. (When they're baked they come out all colourful and camo-like.)

Once the cupcakes have cooled, remove them from their plain wrappers and put them in their fancy ones (I used dark green with scalloped edges from KiwiCakes.

1. Mix up a batch of  buttercream frosting, separate into three bowls and add your three colours as before Projel Khaki, Leaf Green and Black (with a tablespoon or two of cocoa powder added to the black bowl as well). I suggest making the colours LIGHTER than what I did by using less colouring, as the colours darkened between when I first mixed them on Friday and our party the next day
2. Put random blobs of colour into an icing applicator (mine is a $2 shop cheapie, but works just fine)
3. Apply a swirl of icing to each cupcake - ooh look, it's camo!

Then use any leftover icing and lollies to turn plain cookies into army themed ones...

More Army Party Stuff:

• Army Combat Party - a fun adventure
• Army Party How To's And Free Printables
• Army Party Personalised Invitation on my Etsy Shop
• 

Army Combat Party (a fun adventure)

When your kids get older, they start to get very definite ideas about what they want in a birthday party and for the past year all Dash has wanted to do for his 11th birthday is go to Laser Combat (a cross between laser tag and paintball). So an army-themed party it had to be.

With the laser combat part taking up most of the afternoon, I still wanted to have food and hang-out time at home (I do love an at-home party) so wanted to create an Army H.Q. at home where we would assemble before the battle, then regroup for food and cake.

I have to admit I had rather a lot of fun creating this one. The styling had to avoid anything too babyish or cute; it needed to be rugged with a slice of "cool" for a bunch of adventurous 11-year old boys. I think we pulled it off...

[Pallets recycled from the dump - stencil tutorial here; camo duvet cover found on TradeMe for $2;
cargo net from Ali Express with free shipping]

I turned the carport into an Army H.Q. Mess Hall/Rec Room. Stencilled Pallet signs, old canvas camp stretchers, sacking, some camo no-sew bunting and a camouflage cargo net all helped to create a great army atmosphere.

My trusty lemonade stand did duty as a Hydration Station...

[coffee sacks $2 from Geoff's Emporium, camo cups from Kiwi Cakes, Army soda label printables on ginger beer bottles here; genuine army water bottle brought back from China; no-sew bunting tutorial here]

The recruits congregated first at the Army H.Q. where they made use of the Rec Hall (foozeball, soccer) until the convoy was ready to depart for the battlefield. Off to Laser Combat we went.

This is "Magic", the guy who brought Laser Combat to New Zealand. He has created the ultimate place for adventure-loving boys (and girls) in Riverhead Forest.

The legend goes that he's ex-Army (ex-SAS, say the boys, who gaze at him wide-eyed as he gives them their briefing).

As the boys gear up and slap camo on each other's faces you can feel the excitement building. Some of the boys have played before and know they're in for a great adventure. The rookies are excited too; the minute they lay their eyes on those laser guns they realise this is going to be awesome. Me? I'm starting to wish I was playing...

It's just like indoor laser tag; each "soldier" wears  a sensor on their head, which records when you are hit. Each team has a "medic box" which acts as each team's base and records the team's data; when someone is "killed" (after being shot five times) they go back to the medic box and "respawn".

Magic shows the boys how to use the gear, how to stay safe, how to be commandos.
"If you do this, it's all good, but if you do that, it's not good times... not good times at all," he says (and the boys come home quoting him, haha.)

I think this is seriously the coolest game ever. It's like laser tag but without the claustrophobia; like paintball but without the pain. It's the best of both worlds.

[my dad was especially requested by Dash to play laser combat; he's in his late sixties but he had an absolute blast and came back telling of how he lay dead-still in the grass while Mr G stood right over him, hunting him, but not seeing him.]

The two teams did battle while the party slaves had to go home and get the food ready. Sniff. I so wish I could have played. They all came back to base raving about the fun they'd had. Memories were made, people. And the birthday boy finally got his wish.

After all that crawling through the forest playing sniper, those lads were starving hungry by the time they got back to H.Q. So we fed them...

Camouflage cupcakes, army men cookies, chips and "parfaits"; a fruit platter, carrot sticks... and hot dogs (which *oops* exploded in the pot cos I left them in the water too long, so no photos of them).

[camo cupcakes; edible army men lollies from Kiwi Cakes]

I also laid out for the recruits, their stencilled army t-shirts (I found t-shirts online for $2 each, so I couldn't resist doing one for each of them) and hand-stamped metal dog-tags...

I am rather proud of these, and it must be said that the lads thought they were awesome too (and have been observed afterwards wearing them proudly around the place). Just the right amount of army cool...

Before we served cake, Sergeant G couldn't resist challenging the recruits to an impromptu assault course, to test their mettle...

Nothing like a bit of climbing, swinging, crawling and a few pushups on a full stomach...

And finally, it was time to sing happy birthday to our special 11-year-old (it was his actual birthday) and blow out the candles on what one of his pals called "an epic cake".

The cake was a "battlefield" - with camo on the inside. Remarkably simple to do, but so effective (battlefield cake tutorial here)...

All in all a fabulous birthday celebration, and loads of very cool adventurous fun was had by all. (P.S. Magic is making a video for me of the our session at Laser Combat; when it's ready I'll add it in here so you can all see how fab it is)

• Army Party prep and Free Printables
• Battlefield Camouflage Cake & Camo Cupcakes Tutorial
• Camo party supplies on KiwiCakes
• Laser Combat Website

Army Party Prep (Stencil Tutorial & Free Printables)

Dash turns ELEVEN in just over a week. I won't wax lyrical on "how did this happen so fast?" and "oh woe is me, puberty is breathing down my neck!"
I will simply share with you the first stage of my army party preparations, along with some free printables and ideas you might find useful, should you find yourself in possession of a boy who is most impressed with the S.A.S. and thinks a military life would perhaps suit him one day if being a Premier League footballer doesn't pan out. The boy will be taking a bunch of his pals (henceforth known as "recruits") to Laser Combat; then we will return home for some food and a bit of drilling.

So here comes some free-n-easy army stencilling....

First up, the Army T-shirts. I found grey t-shirts in clearance online at ASColour for $2 (small mens size) and also grabbed these khaki big man-sized ones for Sergeant Dad and Colonel Grandad instead ($6 each from KMart).

Here's the word, in Stencil Font, which you can either right-click, save to your computer and print out on an A4 page OR enlarge on the screen, place a piece of paper over it and trace the outline of the letters with a pencil....

Here's the instructions for stenciling the word onto your t-shirts

1. Cut out the letters carefully with a scalpel or craft knife. 
2. Position your stencil where you want it on the t-shirt
3. Place a piece of cardboard on the inside of the t-shirt so no paint soaks through to the back
4. Use a sponge or cloth to dab black paint onto the t-shirt through the stencil (I used regular black poster paint on the khaki tshirts (which all-but washes out), but the white house paint I used on the boys' tshirts is permanent and won't wash out out anytime soon!)
5. Hang up to dry. THAT'S IT.

Mine turned out a little messy on this first attempt, but that's OK. It's all part of it. I tried using a fancy sponge applicator, but had much better success on subsequent stencil projects  with a humble dishrag. Truly.

So don't rhow away your "ARMY" stencil. You'll need it for the next project...

This is where I turned a humble old fruit crate found discarded on the side of the road into a rustic gorgeous work of art. (haha!)

I had really wanted to get a bunch of old ammo tins to display all the food in, on the day, but it turns out those items are rather jolly expensive. Then I remembered the fruit crate I'd nabbed from the inorganic collection and painted blue for Scrag's Carnival party. It would make a fantastic army crate.

So I rustled around under the house and found some old paint cans in two shades of grey (you could use test pots), and Miss Fab and I set to work rustifying the crate.

• I gave the crate a little rough-up with sandpaper, especially on the edges
• We applied the first layer of dark grey paint, all over (except the bottom, cos who looks there?)
• I applied the artistic layer of muddy brownish grey paint with a dry brush, leaving paint strokes visible, to give a slightly rusty old tin effect
• Then I used my stencil to apply the word "ARMY" on both sides, in white paint.
• When it was all dry I got out the sandpaper again and roughed off the edges, to make it look even more rustic...

I'm in love with my army crate. Cost = ZIP. Time take = 30 minutes tops. (Photographer was Scrag).

Once I discovered the delights of stencilling, nothing could hold me back. I made some more words and set about creating some pallet signage...

The pallets were free from the Waitakere recycling (reclaim) centre, as in fact was the paint. Anyone can go there and ask to pick up paint or pallets; it's all there for the taking.

(The Concourse, off Lincoln Rd by the Motorway exit)

The signs will create the entrance to our Army H.Q. and Mess Hall

If you want to make stencils for these words, either right-click, save to your computer and

print out on an A4 page OR enlarge on the screen, place a piece of paper over it and trace the
outline of the letters with a pencil....

And now onto the Freebies...

First up, the soda bottle printable labels. Right click to save to your computer, print out on an A4 page. Trim then stick on 1 litre soda bottles with the labels removed (we are using homebrand ginger beer).

And the same instructions for the Water Bottles (these are a 6-pack of signature range 500ml water bottles; they'll be coming along with us to Laser Combat to keep our recruits hydrated while they do battle).

I think that's almost enough for one post, don't you?

Next week I'll be bringing you a tutorial for Camouflage Cupcakes and a Battle-Scene Birthday Cake. Perhaps some dog-tag metal stamping and some army no-sew bunting? And finally, eventually you'll get to see how it all comes together on the day.

[Camo Party supplies from KiwiCakes; Dog tag sets & camo net from AliExpress; stamping set from Etsy]

Ahhh, I do love me a party.

Our Army Combat Party

• Army Party prep and Free Printables
• Battlefield Camouflage Cake & Camo Cupcakes Tutorial
• Personalised Army/Combat Party Invitation on Etsy
• Camo party supplies on KiwiCakes
• Laser Combat Website