Surprise -- It's a Party!

This weekend, we went to a 30th birthday party for one of my friends, Thi. The pictures of cakes are from that. It was so extremely clever that I wanted to share with you. It was a two part surprise party. Part 1 happened on Wednesday. We shall refer to it as the Purposefully Lame Surprise Party. There were only 3 of us (me, husband and Thi's girlfriend, Sarah). We made a lot of food, but "unfortunately" everyone else who was invited had to cancel. Also, mysteriously the cake didn't have any sugar in it. Whoops. What a sad birthday.

So Thi was not expecting anything else.

Sarah told him that she had to fly out of town on his birthday -- in reality, she was picking up one of his best friends who was flying in from the East Coast. Thus began Part 2: The Real Party. Everyone got together at his place. One friend took him out to dinner, so she could control when he returned home. Kathy, who is thinking about becoming a chef, made these amazing cakes: a brioche cake with strawberries and lemon glaze, carrot cupcakes, zucchini cupcakes, banana cheesecake, onion cake (savory), butterscotch brownies and an orange charlotte with barvarian cream. You can see the whole spread above, and the brioche cake/charlotte are below. They were my favorites.
Yeah, she went a little crazy, but they were amazing. Between us, I'm sure that David & I tried them all. Of course, his friend from out of town was the biggest surprise/present. The whole thing was really fun.