What is equally kind on the washing up but not cup cakes???

[PutThatInYourPipeandSmokeIt]

I am going to make a birthday cake for DDs 1st birthday and then suddenly thought that it would actually be easier to have something equivalent to cup cakes (I would prefer not) so that people (adults) can grab and eat without having to bother about cutting slices and plates etc.

Does anyone have a fab idea that I could pinch??

I was originally going to make a hot pink flower!

how cool! The reason I'm thinking no cup cakes is that the 2 other mum's I hang out with did them for their LOs 1st birthdays and if I do your idea (which I love incidently because it looks like a proper cake and similar to my original idea) they might think I was trying to turn it in to a competition.

Tiny fruit tarts

In petite four cases

Pasty base
Creme Anglais
fruit (strawberries, rasperries, mardarins)
Glaze

Or tiny meringues (tescos/sainsburys do them)

Profiteroles filled with cream with icing instead of choc sauce (maybe pink icing?)

oooh tiny meringues - that's a cool idea. Any thoughts on how I could dust them with hot pink?

Could you colour the cream pink? maybe with sieved raspberries? (add a bit of icing sugar or they will be very tart)

Or put colouring into the meringue mixture

brownies

ooh ooh I could have hot pink cream couldn't I .

I ADORE brownies but I am quite set on something pink to lend towards the birthday cake idea.

when do you need to do it. I have something but no camera to take a picture and download it until tomorrow!

For ds1's shared 1st bday party (the whole NCT group) one mum baked a slab cake (traybake?), iced it, cut it up into cup-cake size pieces and iced each child's name on a piece. Then she laid them out on a board in the form of a caterpillar, with another cake as the head and baby biscuits as the feet.

Mistletoe yes please I would love to see a pic - it's for next weekend, so ages yet .

The caterpillar idea sounds cool but I'm not sure that my icing skills or patience are up to much. I did make a spider cake for a friends DD once but other than the initial wow factor, it was a bit fiddly to distribute!

just waiting for camera to re-charge!!!

uploaded to my profile. They are both a lot easier than they look. Make a big square cake (madeira works well or sponge.) Buy the readyroll icing (you can colour bits yourself with food colouring or buy coloured). Cut cake into little squares and cover with rolled out icing. For the bear bags leave the top open and higher than the cake and fill hole with smarties/jelly beans etc and add a lolly. Add a bear or dolly (made out of icing or bought) For the building blocks cover all sides exactly, buy icing 'glue' or make an icing paste. paint round edges of block and paint numbers/letters and roll in hundreds and thousands.

obviously it would help if I had a public profile!!! D'OH!

Oh wow - how utterly fabulous - I love the bears in bags!!!! That's really food for thought. Did you really do those yourself???

love the bears in bags - might steal that for DD2's birthday in June

I have to confess they were an idea from a really old book mil gave to me. The building blocks I did for dd1's 1st birthday, I was in a caravan in the hottest summer ever, 8.5 months pregnant with dd2 and v v v stressed. The cake tasted revolting (judging by peoples faces) (I had a strawberry craving and added flavouring!)

I made some cakes yesterday to give out for Christmas (had to do it now as having an op next week) I used family sized paper cases -they look like the cup cake cases but they are about 6 or 7 inches in diameter. If you put it inside a tin it doesn't spread around, and comes out perfectly round. But you don't have to wash the tin, and you can cut it into slices in the paper case so there isn't much washing up.