Let it Go!

Unless you have been living under a rock, you have heard of the movie Frozen.  I think every kid that I know has seen it at least once and has the soundtrack memorized.  My niece turned five in April and she chose to have a Frozen party.

Now I have not seen the movie.  Which of course shocked all of my niece's little friends.  I've promised to have my niece and nephew to my house for a sleepover when we will (FINALLY) watch the movie together.  My niece brings this up every time she sees me now.  "I'm still planning our sleepover, Aunt Joy," she said to me the other day.

I've read a lot about the movie so I kind of know the basic plot and who the main characters are.  Plus the movie is called Frozen, so ice is going to be a given.  And there is no shortage of Frozen cake pictures on the internet.  It's a crazy fad (but a good one).

I planned to do a fairly simple cake, but I still wanted it to look cool.  I decided to do a 10-inch round cake in light blue frosting.

The top would be covered with white fondant, like this:

This was the goal.
Maybe I shouldn't show this picture . . . .

You might think this would be easier than covering an entire cake with fondant.

But you would be wrong.  

If I did it again, I think I would do it very differently.  It's hard to make it smooth and nice with nice curvy edges.  It did not look that pretty, but I figured I could cover it up with snowflakes and make it look better.

Any Frozen cake worth it's salt needs to have snowflakes right?  I scoured the internet looking for a snowflake mold.  I finally found one that I really liked, but I didn't really want to spend over thirty dollars for a mold.

So instead I got this one.

I was a little apprehensive because many of the reviews on Amazon complained that the mold was way too shallow and therefore unusable.  But you don't want to have super thick snowflakes!!!  They are supposed to be delicate.  Anyways, it was pretty shallow, but it worked fine to pipe in the melted chocolate.  I made white and blue snowflakes.  (These turned out to be extremely popular with the kids.)

Now I needed a topper.  My plan was to buy Elsa and Anna figurines to just put on the top of the cake.  But you cannot find these figures anywhere for under ten dollars.  Seriously, it's impossible.  I knew I didn't have time to try and make them out of fondant.  Plus people are really hard to make.  So I asked Elisa which of the characters was her favorite.  "Elsa and Anna," she said.

I know you like both but which one is your favorite?

"Both," she said.  "And Olaf too!"

Aha!  Olaf is a snowman.  I don't really know how he fits in the story, but a snowman is made of round shapes.  I could make an Olaf!

I found this picture tutorial on Pinterest.  It is a little blurry, but it was clear enough to follow the directions.  I made Olaf the night before due to illness preventing me from working on it earlier in the week.  If I could do it again, I would make him more in advance.

I put him on a lollipop stick instead of a dowel.  First I made the three balls so I could tell if they were about the correct size.  I put two balls on the stick and added the feet.

Then I made the head.  I thought this would be the hardest part.  I only had the picture instructions, so I was just kind of making it up as I went along.

At first it looked super creepy.  Here I've added the eyes and the background for the mouth.

Now the eyebrows and the buttons.

Next the little hairs on his head.

The arms were actually the hardest part.  I wrapped fondant around toothpicks, but it did not want to stick!  Eventually I got it to work.

Add the tooth and the nose - and there's Olaf!  I could only hope that he wasn't too heavy to stand up.

I also wanted to make a candy "5" for the top of the cake, but I wasn't sure if it would hold up either, once the candy hardened.  I piped the candy onto some parchment paper and stuck the lollipop stick into it.  I piped the blue candy over the white and stuck it in the fridge to harden.

On the day of  the party, I added the snowflakes to the cake and piped on Elisa's name.  Then I added blue raspberry rock candy crystals all along the border.  I was a little disappointed with this purchase.  They had absolutely no flavor whatsoever and only succeeded in turning my hands completely blue.  I would not buy them again.  But it did look cool - so I guess it was worth it.

I brought the cake to my sister's house without the toppers on.  I wasn't sure if the lollipop sticks would hold, so I didn't want to stick them in until I got there.  The five went in fine, although the stick was a little too long for the cake.  Should have made it slightly shorter.

Olaf went in fine too, but he was a bit heavier than I realized.  I knew that he was going to sink into the cake.  I wished I had a longer stick for him.  But we got some good pictures taken right away.  Olaf managed to stay up through lunch and through ice skating, which was several hours.  He did sink a little bit, but it wasn't too bad.

Everyone wanted Olaf, but of course he belonged to Elisa.  Unlike her brother, who chose to save his fondant angry birds, she decided to eat the poor snowman.

All in all, a very successful cake.  Happy birthday to my beautiful niece Elisa!

*If you are interested in ordering an Olaf topper without a cake, send me an email and I'll see what we can do.

Under the Sea

If you ever need an event planner, look no farther.  No, not me.  My friend Hillary is amazing at this stuff.  She was in charge of this shower for my sister-in-law and it was probably the best decorated shower I have ever attended!  Seriously, she has a gift.

So Hillary asked me to make some cupcakes for the shower.  The theme was Under the Sea - a Shellabration.  She found these super cute turtle cupcakes on Pinterest.

But I didn't really want to make 48 turtle cupcake toppers.  So I decided to do some starfish and shell cupcakes as well.

The shells were easy.  I used the Wilton shell candy mold and made sets of light blue, dark blue, green, and "sand" (aka peanut butter flavor) candy shells.  They turned out great!

The starfish were also really easy.  I used a star cutter and cut out thick orange fondant stars.  I used the wrong end of a piping tip to make the smiles.  I let the stars dry on the flower drying rack so that they would be slightly curved.  For the eyes, I dipped a toothpick into black food coloring and the stuck it into the star.

The turtles were slightly more complicated, but they were very cute.

I used the circle cutters for most of the turtle.  The small one made the feet.  I just had to cut off one side and reshape them.

I used the large cutter for the blue background and the medium cutter for the head and body.  I just made the head smaller.

I used the wrong end of a piping tip to make the smiles.  I used gum glue to attach the turtle to the blue background.

Then I added the legs.

I used piping tip 3 and cut the circles in half to make the little spots to go on the turtles back.

I also used a toothpick dipped in black food coloring for the turtles' eyes.

They dried overnight and then I just had to add them to the cupcakes.

I got a new cupcake stand that holds more than my old one and is a platform.  So we put brown sugar on it to look like sand and added a few candy shells.

We also placed some cupcakes on the tables as part of the centerpieces.

The cupcakes fit in great with the decor!