LP's birthday, part 2

The perenially broke mother that I am, I had to figure out how to celebrate LP's birthday without taking out another salary loan. I had initially thought about getting three dozen doughnuts (again) from Krispy Kreme, which meant another Php 700 or so. Then I thought, why not just buy ready-made cupcakes and ice them a la Sonja's cupcakes? It shouldn't cost me more than 500 bucks! And since the nuns at LP's school seriously forbade birthday celebrations in the classroom, that meant I didn't have to feed the entire second grade and faculty.

So that's what I did, bought 6 packs of 10 cupcakes each (Regent, you know, the assorted pack that consists of pandan, ube, mocha, etc.), ingredients for icing, plus food coloring and candy sprinkles. Hehe, Sonja, eat your heart out!

Making the icing was easy, but icing 60 cupcakes proved to be impossible, as I was only able to squeeze enough of the stuff to barely top less than 40 cupcakes. Argh.

And it looked ugly. So bad, I didn't bother to take a picture. The icing wasn't stiff enough to form cute peaks, and even with the star-shaped tip of the piping bag, the icing fell flat. And the cupcakes were, er, rounder and flatter than I thought. They looked more like small mamon than cupcakes.

I started having second thoughts about bringing the cupcakes to LP's school, for fear of embarrassing her. I took out the candy sprinkles and very generously poured the entire can over the cakes. Whew, that improved the appearance somewhat.

I had Yaya smuggle the cupcakes to LP's teacher the following morning. The verdict? The kids loved it! LP recounted how her classmates raved over the cakes and how yummy they were, and that she should bring some more next time. It sure wasn't embarrassing for my LP.

And here I cropped some pics to show how my cupcakes turned out:

Check out the big smiles on their faces.

After school, we picked her up and proceeded to North Park for the much-appropriate noodles and LP's favorite food, siomai.

Happy 8th, Sweetie!