Veggie-Bento

Last week was Cora’s birthday, and she reveled in being the Special Girl on her Special Day. She asked for a birthday crown and sent me back, not once, but twice to make her birthday lunch better. We also had to do her hair over again a few times. Once my girl decides something is going to be special it better be SPECIAL!

I started with this lunch, with a cheese sandwich cake decorated with pinwheel picks, birthday candle pretzels with vegan marshmallow flames (turned yellow with natural food color) on the side and a fruit leather ‘Happy B-Day’ above. In the side compartments are berries decorated with a sparkly pick and coconut yogurt with a frozen yogurt butterfly.

Cora insisted that the candles should be *in* the cake, so I moved the pinwheels to the berries. That left a gap so I added a slice of cake silicone cup with goldfish crackers.

Round 2 was deemed better, but something was still missing – ice cream! Turns out I forgot about the ice cream picks because someone had absconded with them ages ago. Cora quickly rectified the situation and now we have the perfect birthday lunch!

For a fun finishing touch, I decorated the cover of her Easy Lunch Box with festive stickers

I owe a lot of thanks for this lunch (and for so much more) to the wonderful ladies who lunch, the Bento Bloggers and Friends. From Kendra, I learned to make the cake sandwich. She in turn learned it from Cristi. From Cristi and Keeley both I got the wonderful idea to freeze yogurt. I also stole, I mean, borrowed the idea for the pretzel candles but just cannot remember my source. If you recognize them, please leave me a comment. I really want to give due credit!

• Biting The hand birthday cake sandwich
• BentOnBetterLunches birthday cake sandwich
• BentOnBetterLunches frozen yogurt shapes
• Keeley McGuire yogurt stars

To make this lunch I used: