KID PARTY: Cassidy's Candy Birthday

My niece Cassidy recently celebrated her 9th birthday. You can imagine how excited I was when her mom Sheila asked me to help out with the candy table. Cassidy didn't want a childish character theme party.She is after all a young lady turning 9! Instead, she chose 3 colors that she loved, pink, turquoise and purple, and we designed the party around those colors.

To me, making lollipops is like therapy-- yummy therapy, so I happily volunteered. For years I've been making my pops and candy with chocolate but I've been wanting to venture out into hard candy but always hesitated. The thing with hard candy is you have to work much quicker and I've heard that sugar burns are one of the worse types of burns you can get. Nonetheless, I saw an opportunity to try making sugar candy and I must say, I find it easier than chocolate making.

For this table we decided to mix things up, using both homemade and store bought goodies. If you've ever done a candy buffet, you know that buying specific colored candy can get expensive, even with bulk pricing. We had to get creative. While we did buy M&M's and Whoppers in pink, we stuck to regular Hershey bars and kisses and wrapped them to match our theme. We did find gum, ring pops and sour belts in our colors at great prices.

Sheila made two kinds of cupcakes, some covered in ganache and some with traditional butter cream. We topped them with sprinkles and cupcake picks.

Some of the homemade treats included dipped pretzel sticks, Rice Krispy treats, Oreos we decorated with icing and sprinkles and butterfly chocolates.

I love love love the paper poms that have been so popular lately. I kind of went crazy and made more than I initially planned.