How much of our own fantasies do we live out through our children? This struck me as I organised my daughters’ birthdays. ‘We’ deliberated on several themes and finally settled on 'Alice in Wonderland'. My two-year-old of course was not consulted because she thinks a square is a ‘thircle’; a poor grasp of nomenclature automatically precludes a person from decision making. Besides, give her music, balloons, and cake and anything becomes fun.

Truth be told, my six-year-old was not consulted either. I decided the theme months ago, as I was reading her an 'Alice in Wonderland' book during our night-time reading sessions. After that it was merely a matter of showing her an Alice cartoon and building a case for the wonderful possibilities – red and white rose garlands, playing card cupcakes in red, black and white, a Cheshire cat piñata, teacup-shaped party favours! After all, if I had left it to her, there would’ve been princesses and Doras…yawn. Somehow, I think parent-manipulation makes more sense than media-manipulation. 'Alice in Wonderland' – with its crazy characters and existential questions – is both literary and low-brow. (Note: this method of manipulation should only be used sparingly and for the greater good.)

Justification can only get you so far, however, and it was time to do the work. There were plenty of sites offering ideas and pictures of Alice-themed parties, especially thanks to the recently released movie, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp and Anne Hathaway. I confess that I have not watched it. I’d like to keep my memories of the movie adaptation pristine: I watched a more faithful rendition as a child featuring Peter Sellers as the March Hare and Dudley Moore as the dormouse.

As I was looking up fondant cake makers in Islamabad, I found one that made something called a red velvet cake. Perfect, I thought. With a mild chocolate sponge dyed red with either food colour or the juice of beetroots and white cream cheese frosting, the cake fitted perfectly with the red, black, and white theme I was going for. It looks pretty, and who can go wrong with chocolate at a kid’s birthday party?

But the cost was prohibitively expensive, so I decided to try the cake myself. Again, there were loads of recipes on the internet, including one by food goddess Nigella Lawson. But while I could imagine Nigella licking her wooden spoon and gushing about the deep, sensual magenta of the batter, her recipe was long on ingredients but short on method.

One of the tricks used in this cake is vinegar, which apparently brings out the red in cocoa. This I learnt at the joy of baking website, on which I found not only comprehensive instructions, but also a history of the genesis of the cake. It also tells you how to make buttermilk – one of the ingredients – if it is not freely available. I made a few changes to the recipe, however. While cream cheese frosting is, to use Nigella-like phrasing, delightfully silky and decadent, it is also expensive (the point of making it myself was to cut costs after all). So I found this recipe for cooking white frosting. The quantities are enough for a two-layer nine-inch cake:

2 tablespoons flour 1 cup milk 1 cup unsalted butter 1 cup confectioners' sugar 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Frosting: Over medium heat, cook the flour and milk until thickened. Let cool. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the butter, sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Beat in the flour mixture.

Three things I learnt when I made the cake:

1. Make sure the flour and milk mixture and cake are cool (I was impatient and slobbered it on cake that was still warm from the oven and had to frantically chill the cake and frosting in the fridge) before beating the frosting and icing it on the cake;

2. An extra spoonful of cocoa can be added for a more chocolatey cake;

3. Where liquid food colouring is not easily available, two spoons of powdered food colouring mixed in the buttermilk does the trick.

For those unsure of how to do this, I also found an excellent YouTube video demonstration. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to access it if you’re in Pakistan until the 31st of this month; apparently video demonstrations of baking also fall under the category of blasphemy. As the Duchess said in 'Alice in Wonderland': “If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.”