Over the weekend, my older son turned 10 and he has been planning this party for a YEAR! He absolutely loves Stratum Laser Tag and could not wait to have his 10th birthday party there. We are in the pattern of “outsourcing” our boys’ birthday parties every other year. With two birthday parties at home last summer, this year they could choose a place for the celebration.
My son and I worked on the design of the cake together and we were very pleased with how it turned out! He chose a color palate of black, bright green, and bright purple. For the cake, we used Purple Rain by Duff.
This was a bit of a process to create the design but after a couple of mishaps with the cakes, we ended up pouring 1/2 of the white batter in the pan, then 1/2 of the purple, then the remaining white and finally the remaining purple. Then we took a chopstick and marbled it. It didn’t look exactly like the picture on the box – but under the black light of the neon party, it didn’t matter! The kids loved it! I wanted this cake to be big, so we used two boxes of cake mix per 10″ round cake pan. Yes, four boxes of cake mix in total.
To make the frosting black, we followed these instructions from Craftsy and used this recipe for the chocolate buttercream frosting. Because of the size of the cake, we doubled the batch to ensure we had enough frosting. We used Ghiradelli 100% Cacao Unsweetened Chocolate Baking Bars and also added about 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder to the frosting. As suggested in the recipe, the AmeriColor Super Black Gel Paste Food Color worked perfectly! We made the frosting two days before the party and one day before we frosted the cake – letting the color sit in the refrigerator definitely intensifies the color.
My son requested purple and green sprinkles on the cake…. those were applied next.
We let the cake set up in the refrigerator for about an hour. In the meantime, we whipped up the royal icing. Using Wilton’s Decorator Icing, we thinned it out in two separate bowls with water. It needed to be “flinging” consistency. To one bowl we added a few drops of AmeriColor Gel Paste Food Color in Electric Purple and to the other, a few drops of AmeriColor Gel Paste Food Color in Electric Green until the colors matched the color of the sprinkles. Once the frosting was set, using a fork, we flung the icing around the cake. We did add another round of sprinkles after the icing was applied.
It looked pretty cool on the black serving platter!
My nephew was in town visiting and put this cool “behind the scenes” video of the cake decorating.
Behind The Scenes Cake Decorating
At Stratum Laser Tag, we opted for the “Glow Party” which included:
- 2 games of laser tag per player
- Party host & area in the Sky Deck for 2 hours
- Glow-in-the-dark plates, cups, & straws
- Neon table runners & Neon napkin rings
- LED Centerpieces & Enhanced room lighting (black lights and a colorful moving light display)
- 2 XL one-topping pizzas
- Unlimited beverages for each player
- Buy one get one laser tag return pass for each player
- Free laser tag game return pass for the birthday person
- 25 arcade tokens for the birthday person
The party guests loved it! Below are photos of the buffet area (this is where the cake and pizzas were placed for serving) as well as a photo of the dining tables. You can see the glow sticks from the birthday cake in the first image….
While the kids were doing their first round of laser tag, I cracked open five green glow sticks and five purple glow sticks – it was his 10th birthday party, right? It looked awesome!
For the party favors, we filled bags with a green silicone bracelet, a purple and green glow stick, a bag of Pop Rocks (either Green Apple or Grape) and a Green Apple Rock Candy Stick as well as a Grape Rock Candy Stick.
This party was a success! A big thanks to my mom and brother who were in town visiting for the weekend and who were my cake decorating assistants!
