Strawberry Shortcake

My daughter just celebrated her 5th birthday and requested a Strawberry Shortcake themed birthday party.  She also requested to have a moonbounce, which made the party super simple, even though the weather was absolutely miserable.

I had planned on setting everything up outside, but the cold temperatures and rain made that impossible, so we move all the food inside.  I am not good at decorating so the decorations consisted of red, green and pink balloons.  I kept the table simple with a green table cloth and served everything in red bowls.  A couple of years ago I bought a red tiered server from Pottery barn, it was on clearance when I got it and it has been one of my best purchases ever.  I have decided that red is a great option for serving ware and have become a little obsessed with collecting it.  It is perfect for Christmas, 4th of July, Valentines Day and of course Strawberry Shortcake parties, plus it is a great accent piece for many other occasions.

Enough of my red obsession, back to the party.  As I said the table was simple and so was the food.  We had "Fancy" Strawberry and Cream Cheese Sandwich Pockets, pizza muffins, apples and caramel and strawberries and chocolate.  We also served Strawberry Milk and Strawberry Lemonade.  Very simple, but enjoyed by both the kids and the adults who stuck around.  I apologize that I don't have a picture of the spread, but I somehow forgot to take any pictures, but as I said it was simple and not very exciting to look at, so you aren't missing out on much.

The cake was fun to make.  Again, it was pretty simple and wasn't overly Strawberry Shortcake in appearance.  I don't like putting people or faces on cakes, it creeps me out to cut the cakes and eat them, but that is my own personal problem, so even though Maggie loved the Wilton cake, I just couldn't do it.  I found some great ideas on-line and this was the final product.

I was pretty happy with it, but by the time I went to serve it it had started to bow out.  A friend thought I had designed the cake that way on purpose to mimic the characters hat, which it kind of did.  I am not sure what caused the cake to bulge out.  The cake wasn't sliding so I am thinking that some of the icing from the top of the cake started to slide down, although the icing was still smooth on all sides.  If you have any ideas what might have happened or know what would cause this I would love to find out.