This pink and gold Twinkle Twinkle Little Star-themed birthday party was the perfect theme for sweet baby girl Anica, who celebrated her 1st birthday! Nothing like a little gold to bling up a dessert table. Plus, I love the colour combination of pink and gold. I was fortunate to be able to make all the desserts on the table, including macarons, cake pops, chocolate-covered oreos, marshmallows, cookies, cupcakes, and of course, the birthday cake! This is a long post, so sit back and thanks for reading through ;)
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| desserts for a pink & gold themed 1st birthday party |
First up, the cake. The cake is two tiers of Devil's Food Cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache and chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream. The buttercream ruffles are piped out using piping tip no. 104, using crusting American buttercream dyed 9 shades of pink, in ombré fashion, ending up with white at the top of the cake. Each shade makes up at least three ruffle layers.
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| bottom ruffled ombré tier |
I was going for a random yet neat ruffle with this cake. I loved how the overall effect turned out! I might even use the close up shot of the ruffles as my new desktop background on my computer screen. Haha!
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| close-up of the ruffles |
The trick for making these ruffles not look too messy, is to have a steady hand applying consistent pressure to the piping bag, and moving your whole arm up and down in a smooth motion as you rotate the cake turntable in one complete turn. Try not to break the pressure on the bag so that you have one whole ruffle layer. I tend to move my whole arm in an up and down wave instead of just my wrist because it's too tiring!
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| so many shades of pink! |
The shades of pink gradually lightened all the way up the cake. The top tier of the cake is in shades of blush pink, peach and finally, white. I had to keep bringing the mixing bowl out onto my balcony to check the colour under natural sunlight cuz I couldn't tell the difference between the shades of light pink anymore under the sad yellow lighting in my kitchen!
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| fancy no. 1 fondant topper |
To top the cake off, I made a fondant no. 1, by rolling out some fondant dyed "electric pink" into a long snake and then just curling the ends for a fancier feel. I also cut out the birthday girl's name out of white fondant with some letter cutters. I let them dry fully before standing them up at the base of the cake.
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| ruffled pink ombré birthday cake |
The cupcakes were red velvet, frosted with strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream and vanilla cupcakes, frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. The cupcakes were frosted with a classic swirl and sprinkled with edible gold glitter stars.
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| red velvet cupcakes with strawberry pink frosting |
I'm liking these white soufflé cases instead of white paper cupcake liners. One, because they keep their nice white shade (they come in all sorts of colours and patterns) despite the cake being a deep dark red. Paper liners tend to "lose their colour/pattern" when the cakes are dark colours like red velvet or chocolate, which show through. Two, these soufflé cases are really sturdy and don't topple over during transport, plus, you don't even need a cupcake pan to bake them in. Converted yet?
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| vanilla on vanilla cupcakes |
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| pink & white cupcakes with edible gold star sprinkles |
The star wand cake pops were made in the same way as these cake pops from the Enchanted Fairies party. Instead of using regular lollipop sticks, I used plastic silver mini star wands! They look great, plus, they make a nice giveaway for the guests to take home after the party. The cake pops are made of strawberry cake, crumbled and swirled with strawberry buttercream and dipped in strawberry chocolate.
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| star wand cake pops |
I sprinkled on some edible gold stars on top of each cake pop before the chocolate fully hardened. The gold star flecks are so tiny that it is impossible to really control where they fall! Still, I liked the overall shimmery glitz that the gold stars added to these cake pops.
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| edible gold stars to bling up these pops |
My favourite bake for this party were these classy looking pink and gold star cookies! They are sugar cookies that I cut out using a round scallop cookie cutter. They are decorated with a pink fondant circle and royal icing dots and then finished off with a glittery gold fondant star.
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| classy pink and gold star cookies |
To get the shiny glittery gold on the stars, I used gold disco dust. After cutting out the stars and letting them dry a little, brush some water on the stars and then liberally sprinkle the disco dust on top. Do this over a rack with some wax paper underneath, so you can catch whatever disco dust that doesn't stick and reuse it. You can paint luster dust mixed with a little vodka on the stars instead of using the disco dust, but this really doesn't have the same super glittery and glizty effect that disco dust has.
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| glittery gold star cookie pops |
In addition to the round cookies, I also got to make glittery gold star cookie pops, decorated in the same fashion. To get the cookies on the sticks, after rolling out the chilled cookie dough and cutting them into star shapes, gently twist the lollipop stick into the cookie dough, using one hand to push the stick in and the other to hold the cookie in place so that it doesn't lose its shape. Stick the entire pan that you have the cookies on into the freezer and freeze the cookies solid. Take them out of the freezer and flip the cookies over to make sure that the lollipop sticks aren't peeking out of the back. If they are, take some of the leftover cookie dough and patch up the cracks, then flip them back, right-side up and bake as usual. Let the cookies cool completely on a cooling rack before decorating them and then standing them up on a styrofoam block. Took me forever to tie teeny bows on all these cookie pops! Guess my fingers are too thick!
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| pink marshmallow pops |
For the marshmallow pops, first, stick the marshmallows onto sticks. Sounds easy right? Well, there is a trick to it. If yo try and just push the stick through the marshmallow, it is very sticky business (pardon the pun) and you will totally squish the marshmallow out of frustration trying to force the stick through. The trick is to coat the end of the stick with a little vegetable shortening before pushing the stick into the marshmallow. Then you can slide the sticks in easy peasy. Then, dip the marshmallows very very briefly in a mug of water and roll them immediately in sanding sugar. Do not leave the marshmallow submerged in water for longer than it takes to get the surface just wet, or the marshmallow will become soggy. Nobody likes a soggy marshmallow! To finish off the marshmallow pops off, I stuck mini glittery gold fondant stars on with a little royal icing.
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| glorious macaron feet |
The batch of macarons I made for this party were quite possibly the best batch I've ever made! As usual, I whipped up the batter and free-hand piped them onto some baking paper and put them in the oven to bake. I could already tell that these babies were going to turn out great just by the pretty feet that emerged in the oven!
The pink macaron shells were filled with dark chocolate ganache, made using a 2:1 ratio by weight, of dark chocolate to whipping cream. Macarons can be made well in advance and then frozen. The day before you're ready to eat them, take them out of the freezer and let them "ripen" in the fridge overnight, or for 24 hours. It is very important to let the macarons ripen, so that the filling has a chance to soften the inner shell, making for a nice and chewy macaron texture. If you eat the macaron fresh after filling, it will have a crunchy, hard and unpleasant texture. Just before bringing these to the party, I stuck on a glittery gold star using some royal icing on the tops of each macaron. I don't think this step can be done in advance because if you stick the macarons back in the fridge after doing this, condensation will form on the gittery stars and cause them to become a sticky mess.
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| macarons topped with glittery gold star |
The last treat I got to make for the dessert table were chocolate-covered Oreos! These were super simple to make, thanks to my new, handy dandy CybrTrayd mold. Melt some chocolate (I used white and strawberry), spoon some into the base of the mold, place an Oreo cookie in the cavity (any flavour is yummy!), then top it off with more chocolate.
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| white chocolate-covered Berry Oreos |
Tap the mold a few times on the counter to release air bubbles, and then refrigerate it for 10 mins. Pop the chocolate-covered Oreos out onto some wax paper. Add a light sprinkling of edible gold stars, and poof, you've got fancy white and pink chocolate-covered Oreos! Store these little treats in an airtight container and not in the fridge, because you don't want the condensation ruining the shiny smooth surface.
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| strawberry chocolate-covered Golden Oreos |
All of these sweet pink and gold treats were put together on a super lovely dessert table, styled by Sugarena. The dessert table was the perfect mix of sweet, classy and glam, with pink and gold and stars everywhere! I really love the colour combination.
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| Twinkle Twinkle Little Star dessert table* |
The ruffled pink ombré birthday cake was finished off with Sugarena's paper star bunting topper with the birthday girl's name on it. I love how all the shades of pink and gold and white came together. The personalized paper stars that topped the yummy cupcakes were made by Sugarena as well.
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| ruffled pink ombré birthday cake |
Everything came together really nicely on the sweet dessert table. From the custom backdrop and the dreamy table cloth, to the personalized Happy Birthday banner and the Ferrero Rocher tower, this beautifully styled dessert table with minimal props let the desserts speak for themselves. The sky high helium balloons with gold twinkle stars floating above was the perfect touch to add to the ambiance for Anica's classy, magical Twinkle Twinkle Little Star party. Happy 1st Birthday to superstar Anica!
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| Twinkle Twinkle Little Star dessert table* |
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| star helium balloons add a dramatic, magical ambiance* |
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