Bowling Party -4yr- Bowling Ball & Pin Cakes

For my daughter's 4th birthday she wanted a bowling party.

We contacted a bowling alley near our home and made arrangements for the party.  They have birthday party packages where they gave us 2 hours for our party.  One hour for bowling and the other hour for eating lunch and having cake.  The alley supplied the invitations, loot bags, and thank you cards all decorated with a really cool looking bowling ball wearing shades going down a "lane" after the pins. 

We had about 15 kids so we got 3 lanes with 5 kids on each lane and one more for any adults that wanted to bowl.  I had the kids bowling all kinds of goofy ways, i.e. between their legs, backwards, etc.  This was really cute. 

After the bowling we went into a banquet room where we ate lunch.  The kids got to choose either pizza, grilled cheese, hot dog,  or chicken tenders, and they all came with fries except the pizza.  I also had the alley feed the adults, where you could pick a variety or different foods. I chose the lunch meat and cheese platter for sandwiches.  And of course various pitchers of soda and punch was provided. 

For her cake I did two things.  I baked a bowling ball with the Wilton sports ball cake pan (baking 2 halves then use frosting to piece them together to make a round ball) and I decorated it with chocolate frosting (the cake was yellow) and cut out 3 round circles for the "fingers" and filled them with black frosting so that they could be seen.  The overall size of the bowling ball cake was smaller then I had expected. 

I also baked 24 (used 23) chocolate cupcakes in white cupcake holders (double the holders so the chocolate cupcake doesn't show through) and placed them on a large cookie sheet in the shape of a bowling pin.  I then frosted them all together with vanilla frosting and put the red stripes around the neck.  It was my very own bowling pin pull apart cake. This was a huge hit with the kids and the adults.  When you first shape them on the cookie sheet it doesn't appear to take on a rounded enough shape on the sides like a bowling pin but once you start frosting them together you can round the sides really nicely).  It looked really cool. 

The bowling ball turned out delicious too.  I wasn't real sure about that because of the halves being pretty thick but it did come out really moist.  Also, most bowling alleys have arcade rooms if you want arcade games, this is especially helpful for the older kids.  

For their loot bags I filled them all with round jawbreakers, round gum balls, gender related toys, and the dollar store had these packages with several different sports related items and in them were bowling pins and a bowling ball.  So I pulled the bowling stuff out of the packages and will use the other sports themed items for my son's birthday party.  I was tickled when I found them because bowling related items were really hard to find. 

I also gave out prizes (large plastic bowling sets) for the highest scored game, the lowest  scored game, and for the first strike (but no one actually bowled a strike  so I gave it to the one who got the first and only spare).  The two hours went by really fast so we didn't have time to open gifts there but it was nice because everyone stayed busy the whole time. 

Oh, almost forgot, the alley puts up the bumpers along the lane so that they don't have gutterballs all the time.