No soggy bottoms here, find out how to throw a Great British Bake Off Kids Birthday Party! It’s easy to make your GBBO Kids Party a Star Baker.
My Littlest might not be a baker, but he sure does love to watch them. One of his favorite shows is the Great British Bake Off (sometimes called the Great British Baking Show in the US). He gets excited when Mel and Sue yell “ready, set, bake.” He loves Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry’s catch phrases, like no soggy bottoms and getting a nice even bake. And he knows that every episode ends with a Mel and Sue sandwich.
When it came time to plan his birthday party, I knew he would love a Great British Bake Off birthday party. But how do you throw a kids GBBO party? Turns out, pretty easily! We had the Signature Bake, Technical Challenge, and Showstopper just like they do at the show. And we did it all in just a couple of hours.
Signature Bake
For our Signature bake we picked the theme of Shortbread Cookies. The trick was, we didn’t bake any of the cookies. Instead we picked out three different boxes of cookies from the store: Irish shortbread cookies, Scottish shortbread cookies, and French shortbread cookies. We took the cookies out of the packaging and placed them on plates. Then the party guests got to try the different cookies and pick their favorites.
The birthday boy may be holding the Irish shortbread cookie, but he picked the Scottish shortbread cookie as the best of the Signature bakes.
Technical Challenge
In the show the technical challenge is where the contestants get a recipe, usually for something they have never made or heard of, and only part of the instructions. They often aren’t told how long or for what temperature things are to bake. Other directions might be missing as well. For a kids birthday party I knew things needed to be a little simpler.
I picked up a Gingerbread cookie kit, one that would make several small houses, for our technical challenge. I took out all the supplies, but then hid the ‘directions’ from the party guests. Everyone grabbed various house pieces to try to assemble their gingerbread house in the allotted timed. Messy and fun!
Messy and fun! Plus it was something that everyone could help with.
Showstopper
The final challenge in the GBBO tent is the Showstopper. On the show each episode takes place over a weekend. The Signature and Technical both take place on day 1 and day 2 is devoted entirely to the showstopper, often lasting 5 or so hours. Clearly, we didn’t want to take that long for a kids birthday party.
We divided the guests into two groups for the showstopper and each group made 1 cake. Each group got 1 box of cake mix (one group did a yellow cake and the other did a chocolate cake) and ingredients to make frosting. After the birthday boy yelled ‘Ready, Set, Bake’ each time got to dig around in the cupboards to pick out which cake pans and supplies they wanted to use.
Then everyone mixed up their cake mix and got their cakes into the oven. Rather than sit and wait for cakes to bake, we actually did this bit out of order. We had everyone start their cakes first, and then we went back and did the Signature and Technical elements of the party while the cakes were baking.
Once the cakes came out of the oven it was time to cool ever so slightly and then decorate. The yellow cake box team added sprinkles to their cake mix and then created a whole in the middle of the cake that the filled with rainbow candy. A fun surprise when you cut the cake open! If you watch GBBO then you know Paul and Mary do love a good hidden surprise in the cakes.
The chocolate cake box team also hid some chocolate candies in their cake! And they repurposed one of the gingerbread houses from the technical challenge to adorn the top of the cake.
Then the showstopper cakes doubled as birthday cakes for all the guests to eat! Everyone ate some cake as the birthday boy deliberated on who he should select as star baker.
A winner was chosen and received this fun Champion certificate.
After some cake the birthday boy opened all of his Harry Potter themed presents. I think I might know what his birthday party theme will be next year!
Oh Julie, I loved reading about his fun birthday party. I loved that darling picture of our Miss E who made a cameo appearance. What a darling party you and Kara threw. What a team! Thanks for sharing your fun ideas.