My little big girl Cayleigh just celebrated her 3rd birthday on Saturday. I can't believe it's already been 3 years since she was born, on one of the coldest days in Brühl, Germany! In stark contrast, it was a very hot day indeed, here in the tropics, but it didn't matter since her party was indoors, in cool air-conditioning at Dé Happy Ark in Temasek Club.
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| pink Minnie Mouse Dessert Table! |
Cayleigh is a true girly girl. She loves pink, dressing up and being glamourous! Naturally, she loves Minnie Mouse! She had already decided in June that she wanted a pink Minnie Mouse-themed birthday party. The smart little cookie started speaking at a very early age and is really eloquent, even just at 3 years old. We decided to do a Minnie Mouse Tea Party to celebrate Cayleigh's birthday with all her family and friends. The party featured a high tea spread, a DIY tea bar and, of course, a pink Minnie Mouse-themed dessert table, with cake, cupcakes, cookies and cake pops!
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| Pink ombré Minnie Mouse cake |
Since Cayleigh celebrated her birthday at school with a Minnie Mouse cake too, this cake had to be completely different. The cake was made of 2 butter chocolate cheese cakes, stacked together to make the cake a nice tall height. The Minnie Mouse hat was devil's chocolate cake filled chocolate French buttercream filling. The cake was decorated with mini swirl roses, using vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, in pink ombré-style. I started with the darkest pink first for the bottom two layers of rosettes, then gradually added more and more white frosting as I piped the next lighter layers of pink onto the cake, finishing the top of the cake with just a blush pink layer of rosettes. Since it is a tall cake, it is important to have chopsticks and cake boards in between each layer for support, so that the cake doesn't sink into itself from the weight.
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| butter chocolate cheese cake |
To finish off the Minnie hat, were Minnie's signature ears and a white polka-dotted pink bow. These were made of fondant and had to dry a full 24 hours in advance (in air-conditioning) before they were stiff enough to stand up on the cake without drooping. There are BBQ sticks in the ears and chopsticks in the bow, to stand them up on the cake. Cayleigh's name was cut out of fondant with a fancy font tap-it cutter. The letters were allowed to fully dry stiff before placing them onto the cake so that they wouldn't sag.
There were two cupcake flavours: chocolate and strawberry. To Minnie Mouse-ify the cupcakes, two mini-oreos were added for the ears, and some pink fondant hearts and daisies for Minnie's bow. The cupcakes were frosted with chocolate French buttercream & strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream.
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| Minnie Mouse Sugar Cookies |
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| Minnie Mouse cake pops |
To make the Minnie Mouse cake pops, first, make regular round cake pops, crumbling cake and swirling it with a spoonful or so of frosting (vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream, in this case), until the cake crumbs can hold together when squished. Then roll them into balls and freeze them solid. Stick them onto lollipop sticks using some melted chocolate. Please see my cake pop basics page for more tips. Use some melted chocolate to attach a couple of mini Oreos on the top to make ears. Pop the them in the fridge for 5 mins to let the chocolate fully harden. Then, dip the cake pop in melted dark chocolate (or black candy melts) and stand them upright until the chocolate is fully hardened and dry to the touch. Do not put them in the fridge at this point, because the condensation will form on the chocolate when you take them out of the fridge.
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| Minnie Mouse treats (photo credit to lovewithdetails) |
Once the dark chocolate coating has fully hardened, gently twist the cake pop off of the stick, and then dip only the bottom half in melted pink chocolate. Make sure that the pink chocolate is not warm because this will cause the dark chocolate to melt and the pink layer will slide off of the cake pop. Push the cake pop back onto the stick and then stand it upright. When the pink coating has almost set, stick white fondant dots (or suitable confetti sprinkles) onto the surface. If the coating has already set, just dot on a bit of melted pink chocolate using a toothpick, and then put the white fondant dot on top of that. Then, dot on some melted dark chocolate in between the ears and attach the pink fondant bows. These bows were made using a fondant mould. If you don't have one, you can easily use a pair of hearts, placed with their pointy ends together, for the bow.
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| Mouse-tastic pink Minnie Mouse dessert table! |
All these treats were put together on a super Mouse-tastic dessert table done up by Lovewithdetails! I just love the custom banner, the little Minnie Mouse signs and Minnie's hands on the serving tongs! There were even custom-wrapped kit-kat bars to add to the sugar high. Lovewithdetails picked the perfect Minnie Mouse image, one where she has tiny dots on the bows, which matched perfectly with Cayleigh's party dress! I didn't even send them a pic of Cayleigh's dress. They must be psychics!
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| A very happy little birthday gril! |
I dug through Cayleigh's toy box and picked out her Minnie Mouse toy cooking set and pink cosmetics case and used them as props on the table too! Told ya she loves Minnie Mouse. The giveaways for the kids were Minnie & Mickey plastic tumblers, filled with bubbles, candies and chocolates.
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| Minnie Mouse Party giveaways |
Lovewithdetails also provided customized signage for all the food featured on the high tea spread. I'm so grateful that my parents were here on vacation, to help me put together all the items! (yes, it was a working vacation! haaaa.) We cut Mickey mouse shaped cheese too! Definitely couldn't have done it without their help!
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| high tea spread |
Wishing Cayleigh-girl a very happy 3rd birthday! All the pink and Minnie Mouse definitely put her in a very good mood at the party!
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| Happy 3rd Birthday, sweet Cayleigh! |
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