When it came to ‘Sgt Major’, Dev’s 16th Birthday Party, his mom, Alison, pulled off all the planning with military precision. Amidst this planning, I had the privilege of helping Alison make the Army Cupcakes and popcorn ‘grenades’ for Dev’s special day. My inspiration for the army cupcake toppers came from the clever invite designed by Alison for the day & Dev’s incredible excitement about his army themed birthday party. Silver military stars and dogtags with Sgt Dev embossed into them were a must as well as small grenades, belts, and tanks. Neatly folded sugar paste army shirts and brown army boots completed this arsenal of cupcake decorations.

‘Captain’ Alison marched in at tenhundred hours with all the equipment required for Operation Dev’s 16th and we proceeded to mix up batches of camo-coloured cupcakes, butter-iced them in army green and then decorated them with the miniature army toppers. Next we went to battle completing the ‘grenades’. We added melted white chocolate to a batch of freshly popped popcorn and tossed in candy, sprinkles and marshmallows before getting down and dirty rolling out the sticky ‘grenades’.

Operation Dev’s 16th would not have been complete without us getting decked out into battle dress and photographing the preparations for Dev and that is precisely what we did around fourteenhundredhours well camouflaged amidst the greenery of this suburban location.

This joint part of the operation was now complete and Alison took over the next day with the completion of all the arrangements for Dev’s birthday. His friends arrived and were saluted with an array of army rations to keep them nourished for the fun army activities that Alison had planned for the day. The recruits were delighted with their army cupcakes, grenades, hotdog missiles, battle chips, bullets, burger bombs, shots, thirst quenchers and sticks of dynamite. This was definitely one of the most fun cupcake projects I have ever been involved in and helmets off to communications manager, Captain Alison, for commanding her troops on such an memorable occasion. ‘Sgt Major’ Dev, who is an inspiration in himself when it comes to enthusiasm, could not have asked for a better ‘Captain’ for his mom.