Family Matters,  my Persian emersion,  party party

The Great 12th Birthday Bake Off

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It happened! Joon’s 12th Birthday Bake Off! It was just as crazy and fun as you can imagine.

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We had two teams of four girls each. Joon has been really into baking for a while and it turns out her friends are too. Who knew? I guess The Great British Baking Show has a big influence on a lot of us.  I had wanted to rent out a professional kitchen but that turned out to be very expensive (insurance was involved)  so we held the party at Payam’s mom’s house instead which worked out great because she has a large kitchen, two ovens and it was super fun for her to be right in the middle of all the activity.

A lot of things could have gone wrong but… they didn’t!

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It was a flurry of activity. All the girls got along famously.  Of course there were a few tense moments but nothing like the messes I’ve gotten myself into while baking over the years. These girls are pros.

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The parents were the judges and occasional helpers but we pretty much stayed out of the fray and tried to be fair to both teams. That was a little tricker than you’d think. I had to stop myself multiple times from wanting to help clean-up or influence their decisions… “Are you sure you want to mix sweetened condensed milk with strawberries and water to create a glaze?…” I bit my tongue.

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It was a crazy mess, naturally. But soooo much fun!

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I am really thankful to Payam’s family and how willing they are host my crazy whims. So far, so good!

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The last part of the competition was clean-up. A very important part. The floors were a bit sticky but for the most part they did a great job.

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The red team made a vanilla sponge cake with lemon filling and lemon frosting. It was my personal favorite but then I love tart things.

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The black team made a strawberry vanilla sponge cake with strawberry filling and strawberry frosting. It was delicious!

It was hard to pick a winner but in the end the black team scored just a smidge more points, which was awesome for the birthday girl. We gave them spray-painted golden spatula trophys as a prize. I think they could care less about the trophys it was very much more about the process than the end result. In fact, I think all the girls had tasted so much cake and frosting along the way they were sick of it by the end and didn’t even want to try a piece.

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We opened gifts and called it the best party ever!

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Happy Birthday Joon! You inspire the best kind of fun!

Here’s an eleven minute video of the whole thing if you want to see more. :) I apologize in advance for my laugh.

 

 

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