Police birthday party

For the past few months, Owen has realized that he was going to be having a birthday. This year was exciting because I think it's the first year he really understood what it meant to have a birthday. He decided a LONG time ago that he wanted a police car birthday party and a GRAPE cake, yes grape. Talk about stress, I've never even heard of a grape cake.

Of course, Mr. Birthday, our imaginary decorating guy, comes to Massachusetts. Thanks to Uncle Seth and Auntie Liz for the "birthday traps" on the stairs- I think the others are going to be expecting birthday traps in the future.



Here's the rest:



And a close up of the table and the prized police car suitcase, watch out airport security, we'll be travelling with our own law enforcement now:



A while ago, I found this site with wicked cute outfits, Liliputians, that are for kids' birthdays, you can choose their age to get it put on their t-shirt. The price was quite high, ~$100 per outfit, I knew I could make something nice myself, here's what I came up with for less than $40 total for both birthday outfits:



I found all the supplies and prizes for his party from Roberts Company- it's a police supply store. For the gift bags, I had found some lunch bags last year in the dollar bin at Target with police cars, fire trucks, and taxis on them. Inside, I put police coloring books, plastic handcuffs, sheriff badges, pull back police cars, police pencils, police sticker scenes, and color in "wanted" sheets.



For party hats, we had plastic sheriff hats:



We had a donut eating contest because, well you know about police and donuts:



We were going to play red rover and do a running race to test their speed and strength, but unfortunately, it was quite hot, so we opted for playing with squirt guns and using the slip and slide:






The highlight of the party was a visit from a real police officer in a real police car. I don't think even a pony could top that.






And of course, here's the police cake (of course I left my collection of food colors at home, so I was stuck with the standard 4 color pack and had to improvise on the tires:



For the grape cake, I added frozen grape juice concentrate and grape extract (used for candy making):

Here's the recipe if you are ever requested to make a grape cake, it came out good, but honestly, most kids did not finish theirs:

For the cake and cupcakes:
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup frozen grape juice concentrate
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp grape extract

For the grape syrup:
3/4 cup frozen grape juice concentrate
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar

For the icing:
1 1/4 cup sugar
4 egg whites
2 tsp vanilla
2 sticks butter
remaining grape syrup

For the cake, I beat the butter with the sugar, then scraped the sides of the mixer. Then, I added the eggs slowly and the grape extract. I then added the grape concentrate. I mixed together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and alternated adding them with the milk. I put some in cupcake tins and some in a small rectangular cake pan (so I could make the police car). I poked holes in the tops of the cupcakes and cake and drizzled the syrup on top once they cooled. I got the idea here at Annie's Eats.

For the icing, I followed the directions here at How To Eat a Cupcake.

All in all, it was a very fun birthday, here's the whole gang:



And, he's four now: