frozen elsa cake with white chocolate drizzle and fondant snowflake cutouts

My best friend Sue's daughter, Leia, turned four last May, and at the time she was super into Frozen, so she asked me to make her an Elsa cake! Just like the year before, Leia requested a chocolate cake, except this time we decided that I'd make it extra chocolatey and fill it with chocolate mousse (instead of the fresh strawberries and whipped cream filling that I did for her Curious George birthday cake!)

For the cake, I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe (in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and baked it two 8-inch round cake pans. Then once the cake was baked and cooled, I sliced each one in half horizontally, giving me four cake layers. Then I filled it with a rich chocolate mousse filling, using a piping bag fitted with a large round tip to give me even layers of mousse which I smoothed out with an offset spatula.

For the frosting, I whipped up a batch of Swiss meringue buttercream, which I tinted turquoise using a bit or royal blue gel-based food coloring. Then I covered the top and sides with a quick crumb coat, let it chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes, and then did a final smooth coat.

Then I let the cake chill overnight, and I was ready to decorate the next morning!

First I added a white chocolate drizzle around the top and and sides of the cake. (Note: I didn't spread out the chocolate on the top of the cake fast enough, so I wasn't able to get a smooth finish. Then again, it did look a bit like ice!)

Next, I added various sizes of snowflakes, which I had cut out of fondant a head of time using this plunge cutter. (Note: use lots of cornstarch on the cutter, because I had a really hard time getting the cutouts to come out!)

Then I added a piped beaded border using white buttercream, and then it was time to add the Elsa topper! We chose this funko pop figurine as the topper, because it was super cute, and plus Leia would have an Elsa toy to play with afterwards!

I thought it turned out really cute!

Here are some picture of Leia with her cake (Isn't she the cutest?! She has the best smile!)

Happy Birthday, Leia!!!

princess leia cookies for a star wars birthday party

My best friend Sue named her daughter Leia, so of course for Leia's first birthday they had to throw a Star Wars themed party! To go with the theme, I made Princess Leia cookies for the favors. But instead of the heart sprinkle mouth from my previous attempt at Princess Leia cookies, we decided that a cute little smile would be more appropriate for baby Leia :)

Since I was making about 100 cookies, I made four batches of my favorite sugar cookie recipe (which is in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!). I rolled out my dough and used a monkey cookie cutter to cut out shapes, which works perfectly for a Princess Leia shape!

After baking and cooling the cookies, I started on the royal icing (recipe also in my book!). I used brown stiff icing and a small round tip to pipe the outline of Princess Leia's hair, and then filled it in with brown runny icing.

For the face, I used ivory food coloring to tint my icing a flesh tone, and then used the ivory stiff icing to outline the face, and ivory runny icing to fill it in.

Once the cookies had dried for several hours, I used brown stiff icing to pipe the outline of the hair, as well as swirls for Princess Leia's hair buns.

Finally I used black stiff icing to add the eyes and cute little smile.

Aren't they cute? :)

Once the cookies had completely dried, I wrapped them individually in cellophane favor bags, and tied them closed with raffia.

Happy Birthday, little Leia! Hope you had fun at your party!

Stay tuned to see the smash cake that I made her as well!

princess leia cookies

While making these monkey cookies in my last post, I saw something in the monkey cutout shapes...

Princess Leia! Where the monkey ears could be her hair buns! Maybe it was because I had just been talking about making Princess Leia cookies with my friend Sue (who has a daughter named Leia). But whatever the case, it was all I could see while cutting out my monkey cookies!

So I had to try making at least one Princess Leia cookie, especially since I already had just the right colored royal icing that I needed from the monkey cookies!

So I outlined her hair with brown stiff icing, then filled them in with brown runny icing. Then I used tan stiff icing to outline her face, and filled it in with tan runny icing. Once all the icing had dried completely, I used brown stuff icing to pipe the swirls in her hair, and black stiff icing to pipe her eyes. And for her mouth, I simply used a red heart sprinkle! So cute!

When I make these for Sue (for real), I'll probably play around with the mouth to see what I like best. Maybe a piped red heart mouth? Or a piped thin black smile line? Stay tuned!

white chocolate tiaras and red velvet cupcakes

My friend Cindy was helping to plan a bridal shower for one of her best friends, and she asked me to make cupcakes for it.  The theme was going to be "fairytale wedding", so I offered to pipe little tiaras to go on top of the cupcakes.

I tested the idea out by wrapping a few small bottles with waxed paper, and then using royal icing to pipe the tiaras on the bottles (to get the curve of the tiara).  They looked nice, but I couldn't get them off the waxed paper without breaking them!  So I tried using melted white chocolate instead, and it worked beautifully!  And to make them look even nicer, I also added a few pearl sprinkles to the tiaras while they were still wet.

For the red velvet cupcakes, I used my favorite recipe from Martha Stewart's "Cupcakes" book.  Then I topped them with my favorite cream cheese frosting recipe.  We decided to do half of the cupcakes with white cream cheese frosting, and the other half with pink.

The bride loves pearls, so we decorated the cupcakes with pearl sprinkles and tiny white non-pareils.  The original request was to have silver dragees also (those silver ball sprinkles), but they are apparently they are illegal in California!  Online stores won't even ship them to an address in California.  Boo!  (hint hint, to my friends and family who live outside of California!)

I loved the end result - the white and the pink, the different size "pearls", and the tiaras for that fairy tale feel.  I hope the bride and everyone at the shower enjoyed the cupcakes as much as I enjoyed making them!