Julius Dreams of Sushi

Finally coming up for air! As you know I LOVE Halloween. As you also know my kids were born 4 days apart in early November and I LOVE planning their birthdays. Basically mid October to mid November is the most busy period for me all year. Julius asked in July for an “electric car party” which I spent many hours agonizing over what to do and coming up with several ideas. I thought my last one (giant race track with matchbox car racing plus solar car building) was a winner for sure, but Julius went to a friend’s birthday at the roller rink and decided he wanted a skating party. Honestly it was a relief for me. He was again inviting his whole class which is a lot of kids. Then there is always the awkwardness where people ask if they can bring siblings (been there done that too, no shame) and I have to legitimately figure out if I’ll have enough space or not. At the roller rink we could allow siblings because they have infinite space. Plus Will and I both love roller blading so it’s fun for us too! It was insanely expensive though. I think overall it was probably worth it.

So for Julius’ party I luckily had to do very little prep work. Lucky because a week before Halloween Patricia ended up in the hospital with antibiotic resistant bacterial cellulitis. Thankfully some IV antibiotics and warm compresses caused it to drain and we ended up only staying one night (because she didn’t have surgery). Patricia is doing a lot better now but it was pretty scary. This cut down on birthday and Halloween prep time… More on that later. Then my friend Delaney visited from out of town for 3 nights the week before both kids’ parties. We had a blast but I had even less time finishing up party planning!

The good news was Julius’ party was a synch. I only needed to provide cupcakes (I could have bought them but what’s the fun in that) and party favors (which I did buy). I never do typical party favors. I know this is an unpopular opinion but I feel like the favors frequently get thrown in the trash so I like to spend the money on activities they can do and take home at the end of the party. And Julius’ party was EXPENSIVE. So I wasn’t about to drop $5 more per kid for trinkets. Instead Julius and I bought a bunch of matchbox cars at dollar tree for $1.25 a piece (Julius loves matchbox) and I stuck a sticker on the back with the 50 prize tickets and free admission that came with the roller skating package. That seems like a pretty great favor to me…

So all that was left for me to do after Patricia’s party was cupcakes! I made another batch of chocolate cupcakes (after freezing 72 a few days before) because I wanted to be sure to have enough for everyone invited. I defrosted the last 30 and started on the icing after everything was cooled and defrosted. I had a Pinterest board of cupcake ideas for his party, but I couldn’t come up with anything clever that was electric car related. He saw on the board some sushi cupcakes I’d pinned and decided that was a way cuter idea. There are a lot of variants of sushi cupcakes online and this was my variant. I didn’t want to make fondant fish like some of the super cool ones did. So this version was pretty easy and they came out great!

The first step was baking the cupcakes with black cupcake liners, then whipping up a batch of white icing.

I piped a dollop of icing in the center of the cupcake. (I’m not sure why they rose and fell but it actually was perfect for the sushi cupcakes.)

Then I pressed the cupcake into a bowl of white sprinkles, flattening out the icing.

Next I added my toppings. For the whole fish version I added icing to the back of a Swedish Fish candy and then affixed it to the top of the cupcake.

For the other versions I took Starburst candies for the raw fish and cut and lightly shaped them to look like bits of fish sticking out the end of the roll.

Then I used a spoon to press down on the frosting a bit in the center. On top of this I added a small blob of frosting and added the Starburst fish pieces.

Finally I pressed in some green sprinkles on the sides to look like avocado and cucumber.

I experimented with flattening it out but decided it liked it better popping up a bit like you’d see at the end of the roll.

For the day of presentation I mixed some green and yellow food coloring into a small amount of icing, and scooped in into little piles to make wasabi.

I also used this recipe to whip up a batch of chocolate sauce that I provided as “soy sauce” for dipping.

Unfortunately the skating rink has terrible lighting so the colors show a bit more neon than they were in real life. The cupcakes were very well received though and a lot of the kids dipped them right in the chocolate sauce!