Minecraft Birthday

My kids don't have friend parties every year, so I feel like the years they get to have friends over, I need to make it memorable.  This year I didn't have a lot of time to devote to planning, but I was able to find some fun graphics for free online that made everything come together really well.

I got the amazing minecraft graphics from the blog catchmyparty.com

They had invitations, food cards, banners (which I didn't use- keeping it simple), and all the other printables that you might need for a great minecraft party.  

I found this picture on pinterest and decided to try to recreate it. 

I baked a chocolate fudge cake mix in a 9x13 pan with a piece of parchment paper cut to size in the bottom.  I also sprayed the sides and the paper with cooking spray.  

While the cake was baking, I made the blue jello or "water" for the minecraft cake.  Instead of following the regular jello directions, you want to make the jello thick so you can maneuver it into place.  To make minecraft water jello, you need two LARGE boxes of blue jello.  Stir them into 2 1/2 cups of boiling water.  Pour into a 9x13 glass pan (it helps to spray the pan with cooking spray first) and place in the fridge. 

About this time the cake should be done.  Set it aside to cool and get started on the rice krispie treats.  I followed the recipe on the bag of mini marshmallows, except I added a couple extra TBSP's of butter, because I think it makes the treats softer, which worked out really well since I decided to fill all the empty space with rice krispy treat.  

 When the cake is cool, run a knife around the edges and turn the pan upside down to get the cake out of the pan.  The parchment paper should make it come out pretty easily.  I cut a piece of a chocolate wrapper (it was thick paper)- the cake box would work well- to use as a template to cut my squares all the same size (for the most part).  I marked my lines and cut about 1/3 of the cake off in a stair step pattern.  Part of it I put on top of the other piece and some of it I used underneath the second layer (since my cake was much higher in the middle than the edges- cutting it would have been an option to make it flat, but the sides of my cake weren't very thick.  Another possibility is to bake two cakes, cut them both so they're flat and then stack them together- but again, I was trying to keep things simple, so some pieces of cake got used as fillers to level things out. I also cut one piece in half to give myself a couple of short cake levels.

I frosted the tops of some pieces with green buttercream, and used my spreader to rough up the top like grass sort of.  I used chocolate buttercream to hide the wedging-layer-job on the sides, and also on some of the top pieces to hold the raw cane sugar on- I don't play minecraft, but I think that is supposed to represent dirt or something?

I cut the rice krispie treats and created a pool and filled in around the edges of the cake.

The jello worked really well.  I was worried about getting it from one pan to another, but I dipped the jello pan in warm water briefly, cut a couple of squares and used a spatula to scoop them out.  Once I got an edge up, I actually just used my hands to put them in place.  They're really solid.  I think they were in the fridge for four hours or so.  I filled in any cracks with slivers of jello.

I found paper templates online for making your own minecraft creatures here.  The first few kids who arrived saw the cake and were all pretty excited by it.  I was surprised that they all wanted jello and rice krispy treats along with the cake and ice cream.

My son made his name out of perler beads.  I had intended to make a little black and white minecraft sign too, but I ran out of time.  Google perler bead minecraft for some fun ideas though.  

My son also decided the cake needed a tree, so he made one out of legos.  "I just threw it together mom!"

The printables link has fun drink labels.

And food labels- it was interesting trying to find treats that fit each minecraft label.  "coal" for example, was mini oreos.  

10 year olds are pretty good at coming up with their own entertainment.  We watched a movie, had an impromptu dance party, played "mine and go seek" (I have no idea what that was), ate cake, ate treats, watched funny you tube clips and generally ran around being crazy 10-year-olds.  A great time was had by all, I think.