And then they were 7, part 2 | Pizza party ideas

Ok, I’m going to hold my hands up right now, and admit that a lot less effort went into Fonz’s 7th pizza-themed birthday party, than into his sister’s unicorn party (sorry Fonz!). But in my defence, his only requirements were 1) pizza (which the kids made themselves with Little Reds and their amazing mobile woodfired pizza oven), 2) a pizza cake, and 3) a pizza piñata. Apart from that he really didn’t care as long as all his best mates were there. Because we held the twins’ birthday parties at the same time and in the same place – yes, we are mad – we had to divide and conquer and I was in charge of Ez and her friends with all their unicorn activities while Ben took charge of the boys. He kept them well occupied by building an obstacle course, which went down well, especially when they had to do it with water balloons balanced on wooden spoons!

So, onto the pizza party details…

Pizza cake
This was super-easy to do (it was a piece of cake in fact… boom boom), and looked much more effective than I thought it was going to! It was a simple sponge cake with a circle of red fondant icing on top (a border of sponge is left bare to look like the pizza crust). I grated white chocolate on the top to look like cheese (one guest refused to eat the cake because he was convinced it actually was cheese). I found raspberry mushroom sweets in the supermarket, which I cut in half to be the sliced mushrooms, and cut some tops off the mushroom to look like ham The ‘black olives’ are actually fruit gums, and the ‘green peppers’ are fizzy apple laces.

Pizza making
This year we outsourced the party catering (or I might have lost my mind!). When Fonz requested a pizza party, he originally meant one in a popular chain of restaurants, but I’d heard about Little Reds and their mobile woodfired pizza oven. I thought it would be great to be able to hold the party outside, and having the mobile oven meant we could do that. Little Reds supply everything – tables, aprons, boards, ingredients and the kids can make their own pizzas from scratch and then watch them get cooked in minutes in the oven. The finished pizza is popped into a takeaway box so we didn’t even need to worry about plates. The kids ate on picnic blankets on the grass, and anything they didn’t eat they could take home with them in the box. It worked brilliantly, and the pizzas were absolutely delicious.

Pizza piñata
I intended to make my own pizza piñata following this great tutorial for a pizza slice piñata, but as the date of the party approached, I was seriously running out of time, so I decided to adapt a readymade sun piñata instead. I peeled off the sunglasses and smile and divided the circle into segments with a black sharpie to look like pizza slices. The red circles are supposed to be pepperoni, then I also added mushrooms and green peppers cut out of paper.

For more party inspiration, why not check out my ‘for parties’ Pinterest board?