Oh, NO! Not a Bridal Shower Game!
It's that age-old groaning response you hear in the powder room, out of shot of the harried party organizer. C'mon, ladies! Where's that sense of adventure? Well, I love the challenge of making things fun, and I think this one does the job pretty well. So if you are ever asked to come up with a game, give it a try before you run off whimpering behind the punch bowl.
You can call it whatever you like, but I revamped it for this housewarming party by calling it the "Cake Fairy Game". Pretty creative, eh?
When you do this for bridal showers, it's easy to choose the main character - it's the bride-to-be. And her silent cohort can be chosen in any variety of manner, just making sure they are one of the best bakers in da' howz, but it's best to not let on to anyone what is about to happen. They might run. And I don't recommend tackling in party attire.
For the housewarming party, I handed out 3 by 5 cards and pencils to everyone, with instructions to write their names and an estimation of how many hours a year they might spend baking from scratch in the kitchen. No one knew why, other than we were going to play a game.
It was impressive, and dare I say uncanny, how much discussion can take place concerning that simple instruction, but after about 5 minutes I had all the cards in.
The one with the highest estimate of hours was bestowed the honor of the Mute Chef.
The one with the lowest estimate of hours was transformed into the Cake Fairy.
Then they were given their props, and let in on the parameters of the next 20 minutes of their lives. Once the chef hat was on, our chef protagonist became mute, much to her chagrin.
The Mute chef is not only forbidden to speak, she may not make hand motions, nor impart any help whatsoever to the Cake Fairy. The Mute Chef is only to follow commands given by the Cake Fairy.
The Cake Fairy is to instruct the Mute Chef how to bake a cake... ~ from scratch.
Without a recipe, by the way. She does no work herself. She's a fairy, Silly. The Cake Fairy simply commands, and the Mute Chef obeys.
Generally, a bride-to-be has little experience baking from scratch, so the game is hilarious, especially if she enjoys hamming it up.
The Mute Chef is about dying the whole time because she knows just how badly this cake is going to turn out, and there is nothing, NOTHING she is allowed to do to divert the disaster, except participate in creating it.
In this case our hostess, for whom we threw the housewarming party, had no experience baking from scratch either, so it was just as fun.
Here she is, thoroughly enjoying waving her wand as she issues commands like royalty.
I always bring a box of pantry items, in case the host home is short on anything. I throw in necessary ingredients for basic cake baking - plus some extras to throw them off. It's much more fun to see them try to figure out just how much corn starch goes into the bowl.
Both times I've done this game, the cake was amazingly edible, despite the lack of experience, and we wrote the recipe down on a card, for future posterity, as the cake was being put together.
Make sure you do this game first, as the cake will need to bake while the rest of the party is going on, and then you can eat it at the end. Or feed it to the chickens, whichever seems most appropriate at the time.
Yup, now that the cake is in the oven, they'll need to make frosting, too.
It was really good! This one ended up being not real sweet, with about half the sugar a cake would normally have, and the frosting was more like a drizzled icing. I think we have a new chef on our hands!
All hail the Cake Fairy!
~Faith
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