Z's Birthday Tea

The space: Perfect. Renting a cafe that is normally closed on weekends was a no-hassle solution that gave us plenty of space for our partying crew. The cafe supplied coffee, pastries, fresh-baked Snickerdoodles, music via satellite, um, electricity... really, having the space was what it was all about.
The games: We followed ZRecs reader Homestead's advice and brought a game of Clothespin Drop - clothespins with streamers attached, to drop in a cup from a chair's height. Z amused herself playing it solo while we finished loading the car,and then we never felt the need to pull it out at the party itself. If you're looking for party game ideas for young children, make sure to read the reader comments on our Summer Birthday Planning post.
Z's tea set: The teapot dribbles. Not good for a children's tea set! To our surprise, my mother sent a small children's silver-plated tea service set she had bought years ago to save for a future granddaughter. She'd been planning to save it for a few more years, but when she heard about our theme for the party, she couldn't resist. We'll use the silver service along with our Russell-Wright-style cups for future home teas.
The cake: We made Six-Minute Chocolate Cake, a deliciously moist vegan chocolate cake, in a Nordicware castle cake pan I received as a gift for my own birthday a few days earlier. We urge you to try this amazing and so-simple cake; no one will believe it's vegan - it's that good! From Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, a great (and James Beard Award-winning) collection of vegetarian dishes which can all be prepared in about half an hour or less.

Compositionally, Z's cake consisted of a string of castle units and cleverly broken-up pieces of the two "keep" muffins to make a series of linked towers and parapeted walls, all perched on a mountain made of one 9" round cake and three small 4" rounds arranged on top of it and frosted in white. The finished castle was dusted with powdered sugar, and I made a small river of purple sprinkles trailing out from a crevasse under one of the castle's battered plinth walls, and proudly noted its similarities to the fortress in the Valley of the Assassins - at least, to Louis L'Amour's version of it. We didn't get a good photo of the finished cake, which means it can live on in our minds as more professional- and polished-looking than it actually was.

Six-Minute Chocolate Cake
Ingredients: 1 1/2 c. unbleached white flour
1/3 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 c. sugar
1/2 c. vegetable oil
1 c. cold water or brewed coffee
2 t. pure vanilla extract
2 T. cider vinegar

Directions: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Sift together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt, and sugar into an ungreased 8" square or 9" round baking pan. In a two-cup liquid measuring cup, measure oil, measure in water or coffee, and add vanilla (minimizes dishes). Pour liquid ingredients into the baking pan and mix with a fork. When the batter is smooth, add cider vinegar and stir quickly. There will be pale swirls in the batter where the baking soda and vinegar are reacting. Stir just until the vinegar is evenly distributed throughout the batter. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

We used additional cake batter to make cupcake cones, and had one disaster:

which led to a redo and, in the end, an extremely clean oven.