Elephant Cookies, Cake Pops, Macarons & Cake

It was another busy weekend, with my youngest daughter celebrating her 1st birthday! Just last week we celebrated her sister's birthday with a Minnie Mouse tea party. Technically, we could have had a joint celebration since their birthdays are only six days apart, but because it was Gabi's 1st birthday, I wanted her to have her very own celebration. So to celebrate, Gabi had a grey and pink elephant-themed birthday party, with a sweet table featuring two kinds of cookies, pink elephant cake pops, chocolate macarons and of course, an elephant-topped birthday cake! Why elephants, you may ask? Well, Gabi had these cute elephant themed onsies when she was still a tiny little infant and I thought it would be a nice birthday theme. 

pink & grey elephants sweet table

Ok, on to the sweets! First up, the cookies. There were two kinds: sugar cookies and chocolate peanut butter cookies.

Pink & Grey Elephant cookies!!

The sugar cookies were round and decorated with fondant. The pink and white polka dot background was done the same way as these Minnie & Mickey cookies were decorated, with each dot being cut out and then filled in so that the surface remains flat. The grey elephant on top was cut using a small elephant cookie cutter. Pink fondant hearts were used for the ears. 

Elephant Sugar Cookies

The elephant and no. 1 shaped cookies are chocolate peanut butter cookies. I tried out a recipe that I had found a while back but totally forgot about, and they are so yummy! I used chunky peanut butter which gave the cookies a nice crunch. These cookies are decorated with fondant too, using the same elephant and no. 1 cookie cutters to cut out the shape. My friend pointed out how "perky" the elephants' butts are! Haaa.

Elephant Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

There were also two kinds of cake pops: strawberry & chocolate. Both cake pops were formed into balls using the method described in my cake pop basics page. 

elephant cake pops

The round chocolate cake pops were dipped into pink strawberry-flavoured chocolate and sprinkled with pink and white non-pareils before the coating dried. 

chocolate cake pops

The strawberry cake pops were hand-shaped into elephants. To make the trunk, one side of the cake ball was rolled in between the edges of my palm until a little snake formed. This little snake was then gently bent backwards to form the elephant's trunk. A small dent was then gently pressed into the bottom of the cake ball to form the legs. The elephant cake balls were then frozen before being dipped into melted pink strawberry-flavoured chocolate. Small fondant hearts were used for the elephants' ears and their eyes were dotted on using a black edible food marker.

strawberry pink elephant cake pops

The macarons were simply filled with chocolate ganache. I made the shells several different shades of pink cuz what little girl doesn't like more pink on her sweet table?

chocolate ganache macarons

And finally, the cake. To minimize the fondant on the cake and keep it simple, it was decorated in buttercream ruffles, in pink ombré-style! Vanilla crusting buttercream was dyed 5 shades of pink to really get the nice colour gradation from dark to light going up the cake. I used piping to no. 104 to apply the buttercream on the cake and get the nice ruffled effect. To get a neater looking cake, it is important to have the cake on a turntable so that you can turn the cake and squeeze out one complete ruffle around the entire perimeter of the cake without breaking ruffle, starting from the top of the cake and working your way down. The first few layers of white ruffles were a little messy as I got the hang of squeezing the piping bag and rotating the turntable at the same time. I was going for more of a neat, "controlled" ruffled look. Of course, if you want messy ruffles, that's perfectly ok too, since ruffles are random anyway!

pink ombré ruffled, elephant-topped birthday cake!

To top the cake, I shaped an elephant out of grey fondant, and had it holding up a little pink fondant balloon on a wire, with a no. 1 on it, made in the same way as these elephants. This elephant also had cute a teeny pink fondant heart for a tail. Gabi's full name was then cut out of white fondant using letter cutters and allowed to fully dry before standing them up at the base of the cake. I love how this cake looks! Minimalistic and perfect for a baby girl's 1st birthday!

fondant elephant cake topper

Oh, I forgot to mention that the cake is a super tall 6-layer pink ombré vanilla butter cake, filled with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream! Here's how it looked inside after it was cut.

pink ombré cake layers

Baby Gabi's first year of smiles and poops has just flown by. It seems like it was just yesterday that I was part of Gabi's exciting birth story, as she was nearly born in our car on the side of the expressway! Wishing my big little baby girl a happy 1st birthday! May your life be full of smiles, fun experiences & the warmth and laughter of people that love you!

Happy 1st Birthday, Gabi!!