Theme parties. They're my party-planning bread & butter. So what happens when you and your friends desperately want to go camping, but your schedules simply refuse to line up? You throw a theme party, that's what you do! And when it just so happens to collide with someone's birthday, well then you get double the party for your planning!
I may be alone in this, but part of the fun of actually partying is planning. Which is what I love most about theme parties, but I digress. Our first brilliant Camp-Out Theme Party idea was the golden child:
A Pancake Cake.
Neigh, a Pancake Birthday Cake!
Step one: giant pancakes.
No, giant. Giant, giant.
YES!
Isn't that fantastic folks?
So you flip yourself a pile of lovely, giant flaps and there you have a stack!
A cake stack, that is.
We hit up google for a maple butter frosting, in keeping with the theme.
This is the recipe we found but for some reason, ours just didn't turn out as pretty
We've theorized it doesn't need that whole cup of maple syrup ... but the texture ... anyone know what went wrong there? Back on task though, we have our theme party and a delicious pancake cake, we're ready to party.
Step two: Set up camp
We added a fire pit, some camping chairs, a dog and a sleeping bag, you know - to really set it off
Also enjoyed but not seen (or should I say, not photographed by yours truly...)
Hot Dogs!
Frito Pie!!!
But I have to elaborate on this before I load the picture, you see most of the fun of planning for a theme party is finding other people's genius ideas, like this Frito Pie, camping Style!
How cool is that?! Okay, so our Frito pie was in a casserole dish, its still technically camping food.
Another classic camping food: Baked Potatoes. But since we had the luxury of a house, oven and casserole dishes - I made a delicious Baked Potato Casserole, like the one seen here:
And for dessert, we roasted up plenty of marshmallows
Which of course became S'mores! Glorious S'mores!!
We even reverse engineered one, successfully But you'll never believe me, because I didn't get any photographic evidence. I guess we'll just have to tell our tall tale from now on.
What I did get pictures of was the pancake cake becoming a birthday cake!
Neat, right?!
The party was a hit, everyone had a great time, and in the morning we were able to enjoy an epic camping leftovers breakfast
