A Piggy 2nd Birthday

I fell in love with the pigs-in-the-mud birthday cake I saw online and decided to create a theme around the cake for our foster-daughter's second birthday party. The theme was Piggies and Pink, which means that everything was pink, as you can see. To break the colour a bit, I used pink-and-white striped napkins.

I also used pink balloons to make pig faces to place on a string against the wall. I made snouts and ears from pink paper and stuck it onto the balloons with sellotape. The pigs had different eyes - round eyes, halfmoon eyes that looked like a smiley face, and another with halfmoon eyes and eye lashes. The plates and cups were, of course, also pink. I drew two black circles on the bottom of the cups, to make it look like the snout of a pig when drinking.

Some beverages and snacks were served before lunch. Each snack had a unique name related to pigs, written on pink boards - to make the day a bit more fun. I dubbed the beverages Pork Snouts and Juice, with the cups I created being the Pork Snouts. There were various soft drinks and fruit juices.

The snacks consisted of:

• Pig Eyes: Strawberry Swirl biscuits
• Pig Cheese Rolls: Mini-cheese puff pastries
• Pork Crackling: Bacon crackling and tortilla chips
• Pigs-in-a-blanket: Viennas and cheese wrapped in puff pastries - baked in the oven.
  
• Pig Buts: Marie Biscuits with melted marshmallows on top, covered with pink icing sugar. Small marshmallows dipped in chocolate were used as feet, and soft strawberry sweets represent the cookie pigs' tails.
• Pig Ears: Candy ice cream cones
• Pig Tails: Soft strawberry candy
• Pig Hooves: Heart-shaped chocolates - I made a mix of milk- and dark chocolate. The guests loved these!.
  

For lunch we served boerewors rolls - my husband braaied some thin boerewors, which was easy and fun for the kids and the adults.

Finally it was time for the Pigs-in-the-mud cake!. The cake consisted of two layers of chocolate cake, with caramel between the layers. I used chocolate finger bars (I used Kit-Kat bars) for the fence, and tied it with a pink ribbon. Before adding the 'mud' (chocolate ganache), I made the piggies in the mud. I used store-bought fondant to make one pig looking like it was diving into the cake (I made a ball and added a little fondant tail). The other pig seemed to be floating in the mud, so I made a ball for its body, two small balls for the feet, two triangles for the ears and a snout that stuck out of the mud. I added the chocolate ganache and immediately placed the pigs, before the ganache started to set. It was quite easy to make, and really impressed the guests. Give it a try!

The Invitation