A Children's Party, Minus the Migraine

One of the secrets to a successful birthday party for kids is minimizing their sugar intake. It's common knowledge that a gathering of pint-sized mischief makers has potential for chaos on par with one of those Hollywood natural disaster flicks. Add to the process some processed sugar and you'll be saying to yourself "Armageddon outta here!” 

The excitement of the pending festivities already had the kids emotionally charged, and you want to give them soda? Are you crazy?! That's like pouring Coke into a bag of pop rocks, baby. You need to come up with some alternative beverages, first of all, because the average 12 ounce can of soda contains about 40 grams of refined sugar. Think about it; you can actually feel the sugar on your tongue when you drink grape or orange soda usually spotted at childrens' birthday parties. People get these generic soft drinks to save some money, but save yourself the headache and get some Juicy Juice instead. "Juicy Juice is 100 percent real juice” and that reduces your chances of having some 6-year-old throw a tantrum and a few projectiles at an unsuspecting partygoer's head by 50 percent. (I'm 90 percent sure of that.) 

Before we get to the cake, let's consider some pie - pizza pie. Pizza, along with being a consistent kid favorite, is also an affordable and relatively healthy pre-birthday cake primer. There's an ulterior motive behind giving the tykes a couple slices of pizza before that piece of the main drawing card: pizza is filling. The mozzarella cheese makes for full bellies and, if you wait a little while between serving the pizza and serving the cake, the wee ones will not want as much cake as they otherwise would have. So, let them eat cake, but after the pizza has settled in their little stomachs for a bit, they suddenly won't be crying for the biggest piece. With kids, their eyes are often bigger than their stomachs, but some cheesy dough should remedy that Bulging Eyes Syndrome.