Aiden’s Geode Party
For Aiden’s 9th Birthday we celebrated with a Geode Theme in honour of his love of interesting rocks and sparkling crystals. Geology is such a fascinating subject and he has loved learning about the different minerals as well as admiring the amazing textures of them.
It was fun to apply my creative skills to baking these gingerbread cookies and icing them, adding edible paint swirls and sprinkles of crystalline sugars to make them look like agate slices.
Not all creative ideas were smooth sailing. In making these agate slice jellies using agar as the setting agent the first batch was a massive fail, they wouldn’t set and come out of their moulds. Luckily a second batch did work out before the party.
We loved being able to think creatively about this theme and how we could express the idea of rocks and crystals through the choice of tableware and food served at the party.
Marshmallows with chocolate chunks and swirled patterns imitate the sandstone cliffs. Rocky clumps of popcorn, crackers are all subtle allusions to rocky textures. Whirls of Turkish delight and chunks of honeycomb and small crystal jewels of chewy jellies all evoked the theme beautifully.
For the cheese plate we selected cheeses that had a veined patina or craggy exterior to echo this look. Presented on a marble platter to enhance the rock effects.
Vul-e-vent pastry cases have a layered pastry effect reminscient of sandstone cliffs making them a good choice for the theme. Pastry encrusted curry puffs also fit in with this idea.
In preparing the fruit salad, watermelon and honeydew melon was cut into shards to look more like crystals and grapes were cut into half or left whole to resemble gemstones. A bowl of edible chocolate rocks were a perfect find to add to the party table.
Chocolate crackles decorated with a rubble of little edible chocolate balls made for a nice ode to the rock theme.
The flowers used to decorate the table were also chosen for their crystalline appearances. The spikey petals of the chrysanthemum reminscient of a crystal cluster whilst the colourful little pops of dyed baby’s breath look like tiny jewels scattered across the table.
We chose a sushi platter made up of baby rolls as we liked the idea of them appearing like cross sections of stones, the seaweed outer edge, the thicker white rice crust and jewel like centres. We used an array of stones from our personal collection to decorate the table throughout.
For the birthday cake we made a red velvet layered cake and cut a crevasse out of the side to fill with crystalline sugars and flecks of gold leaf to make a geode themed cake. Aiden enjoyed helping to decorate the cake himself as we worked on the colourful sugary seam.
Another artistic touch we added was creating a bunting made of Perspex sheets cut into geometric shards and decorated with alcohol inks to look like shimmering crystals in the background. The effect was subtle and pretty as you moved around the party though their transparency made them difficult to photograph well.
