Super Mario Birthday Party!

I can't believe the oldest of the monsters is already NINE years old. <insert crying face emoji> I had subscribed to Baby Centre monthly email updates while I was still pregnant with him. The other day, I received an email with the Subject header, "Your 8-Year-Old: Wow, where did the time go?" and the email stated that we had reached the end of the age-by-age newsletters and articles. <insert another crying face emoji>. The big kid had his heart set on a Super Mario themed birthday since last year, and so that is what we did! 

Super Mario Dessert Table

It's pretty special cuz none of the kids have ever had a birthday party here with my family and friends. We usually only visit during Christmas or for family weddings etc. I made all sorts of treats for his party: cakesicles, cookie pops, cupcakes, cake pops, mini fruit tarts and birthday cakes. Yes, two cakes! Cuz he's birthday twins with my sister's kid! 

Family Photo with the happy boy!

If you'd like to read about the party venue, food and deco, you can read this post! Get comfy cuz this is gonna be one Super Mario long post!

funfetti cakesicle batter

So for the cakesicles, they're made of funfetti cake, and dipped in melted white chocolate, dyed red and yellow with powdered food colouring and Americolour candy oil. 

funfetti cakesicles, fresh from the oven

I had made the royal icing transfers a day in advance so that they would be fully dry by the time I needed to place them onto the cakesicles. 

royal icing transfers, Super Mario-styles

To make royal icing transfers, I printed out the Super Mario characters on a sheet of paper. Then I laid a sheet of acetate paper over that and taped it flat to the table. Then, it's pretty much adult colouring, filling in the different colours on each character with 15-second royal icing, with a little drying time waiting in between each "section" so that the colour all don't run in to each other. 

who's your fave Super Mario character?

Once they're fully dry, you can just gently peel the acetate sheet off of them, and pop the royal icing transfers right on the wet chocolate, just after dipping your cakesicle. This fun design was inspired by Sweet Stuff.

Super Mario cakesicles!

For the cookie pops, I cut star shapes out of cookie dough, and pushed lollipop sticks into the shapes, twisting gently so as not to deform the dough. I stuck them in the freezer for 30 mins before baking, so that the dough doesn't expand too much. Then I decorated them with royal icing, making sure to add the eyes. I love how adding eyes changes them from simple star cookie pops to Super Star cookie pops. Ha!

Super Star cookie pops

The Power-Up & One-Up mushroom cupcakes were chocolate cake, frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I had some cupcake wrappers from All Mommy Wants leftover from the last Super Mario dessert table that we worked on together, and these were perfect for the cupcakes! The other cupcakes were simply decorated with red buttercream and some fondant stars. I cut out paper toppers of a bunch of different Super Mario characters and placed these on top of the cupcakes too. 

Mario Power-Up Mushrooms on Mystery Blocks

The cake pops were made out of devil's food cake, swirled with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. The mushroom stem and the cap were formed out of cake pop dough separately. I first stuck the stem onto the cake pop and dipped that in flesh-tone coloured melted white chocolate. I got made the flesh-tone by adding a little dark chocolate to the white chocolate, and then adding a drop of yellow. 

Power-Up Mushroom Cake Pops

To get the caps on, I dipped just the bottom of the cap in melted red chocolate first, stuck it onto the stem, and then dipped the whole cap back in the red chocolate. I stuck on white fondant circles with a little bit of water once the chocolate had solidified. I drew eyes using Wilton black candy markers, making these mushroom cake pops Super Mushrooms!

mini Super fruit tarts

The mini fruit tart shells were made out of almond sablé pastry. It is a bit time consuming rolling out the dough, cutting out the tart shapes and then pressing them individually into the mini tart pans, but it is a therapeutic production process.

making mini tart shells

The tarts are filled with pastry cream and topped with raspberries, kiwis, blueberries and strawberries, glazed with a little clear piping jelly. 

mini Super Fruit Tarts

The cake I made for my nephew was a gigantic Super Mushroom (aka Power-Up Mushroom). Both the cap and the stem were devil's food cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache filling. 

carving the mushroom cap

I baked the mushroom cap part in 8" pans, and then carved the cake to this half-sphere shape. After crumb coating the caps and the stem cakes separately, I covered them in fondant, and then stacked them on top of each other, effectively making it a 2-tier cake! 

Power-Up Mushroom Cake!

two cakes for two birthday boys!

The finishing touches for this cake were the mushroom cap spots, the eyes, and a Mario-font "Super Callum" birthday sign standing proudly on top!

fierce Bowser on this Super Mario cake

Now, for my son's birthday cake! His fave character is Bowser, aka King Koopa. Go figure. This kid tends to like the villains in most stories and games. I sculpted Bowser's face to go right in front of the cake. I didn't want to make it a flat 2D cutout, so I kinda made it so he popped out a little, with 3D elements. 

ube chiffon cake batter

The bottom tier of the cake is ube-macapuno cake. It's a traditional filipino flavour, four layers of ube (taro) chiffon cake, ube halaya (taro jam) filling, macapuno strings (coconut sport) and frosted in vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I really should've made the buttercream ube flavoured as well, but I kept all the buttercream vanilla so I could use it for the chocolate cake and the cupcakes as well. 

assembling the ube cake! ube halaya & macapuno filling

The top tier of the cake is a lychee sponge cake, filled with fresh whipped cream and lots of sweet juicy lychee fruit. 

lychee sponge with lots of sweet juicy lychee bits

I had a fun time making the small decorations that went all around this cake! Some Super Mushrooms, Goombas, Fire Flowers, Piranha Plants, Bricks, Mystery Boxes, Super Stars, gold coins and clouds! The cake looked like a game scene when it was finished! My only regret is not capturing a 360 video or photo the whole cake. Would've been fun to make a video with the cake rotating on a turntable so you can see it from all sides. It was just such a busy day that I didn't get a chance to! I literally only finished the cake with half an hour left to get to the party!

Super Dominic's birthday cake

I made a warp pipe to go on top of the cake, by wrapping a green rolled out piece of fondant around some cardboard, and then letting it fully dry overnight. I stuffed cake pop dough into the middle, and placed a number 9 candle on top of it. I stuck on a Super Mario toy figurine beside the warp pipe, using some stiff royal icing. McDonald's just happened to have give this toy out with the Happy Meal when we visited McDonald's a couple months ago! Saved me the trouble of sculpting a sugar Mario figurine. 

"It's-a me, Mario!"

The finishing touch was the birthday boy's name, Super Dominic, cut out in Mario font! He was so excited and happy when he saw the finished cake. And honestly, I felt like busting out the Nintendo and playing a few levels right then and there. 

Super Mario Dessert Table

All these Super Mario desserts and cake went on this Super Mario themed dessert table! I crafted some Mystery Box coins out of yellow poster paper, and stuck cutouts of question marks on each face of the boxes. (Yep, my hand cramped after cutting out 80 question marks!) I filled the boxes with gold chocolate coins (Loonies cuz we're in Canada!), and used them as a platform to display the Power-Up and One-Up mushroom cupcakes. 

hand-crafted Mystery Block boxes!

picture frame "plates"

I borrowed an idea from All Mommy Wants and used picture frames instead of plates to display the cakesicles and fruit tarts! I printed out Super Mario game scenes and put those in the frame, which made for a cool reveal when people started taking the desserts off of the frames. 

funfetti cakesicles

My youngest sister made these two awesome Piranha Plant props out of paper, foam and some red vinyl tape! Love how they add that extra special detail to the dessert table! 

love those hand-crafted piranha plant props!

The "bricks" that some of the cupcakes and the big Super Mushroom cake are sitting is a foam block and Nespresso capsule box that I wrapped in brown construction paper and drew lines on with a black Sharpie. 

chocolate cupcakes with hand-cut paper toppers

The mini game console that these Super Star cookie pops are standing on is a functioning game console that has 500 built-in original Nintendo games in it, including favourites like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong! 

Super Mario desserts

The birthday boys had a blast at the party celebrating with their friends and family. Callum loved eating the cakesicles. He kept calling it candy! cuz of all the rainbow confetti sprinkles inside. Wishing big boy Dominic and sweet little Callum a very happy 9th & 2nd birthday!! Thanks for reading this super epic post! 

Happy Birthday, Super Dom & Super Callum!!