Crissa's Cake Corner!: Princess Aurora & Rapunzel Dessert Table

My two girls celebrated their 5th & 7th birthdays with a "Princess on Ice" skating party, featuring Rapunzel and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty). We had decided on the theme last year, after my aunt had gifted the girls lovely princesses dresses. The ice rink near our place was available for the celebration, with a spacious warm room above for refreshments after skating. Head on over to this post to read all about the party details, including the hot chocolate bar & the *real* Princess Aurora's visit!

Princess Aurora-Rapunzel Dessert Table

The two birthday princesses!

I had fun making all the desserts and cake for the pink and purple dessert table, including cookies, macarons, cake pops, mini fruit tarts, a donut tower and the birthday cake. The cookies were vanilla sugar cookies, with a hint of lemon, decorated as crowns, princess dresses & snowflakes.

fondant cookie toppers

I cut holes in the snowflake cookies and threaded ribbon onto to them, so that they could be displayed hanging from a tree!

hanging snowflake sugar cookies & donut tower

For the macarons, I made Rapunzel and Aurora macarons, using the Italian method cuz I find that the batter is more stable for character macarons than the French method.

macaron batter, ready to go

letting a skin form on the surface before baking

freshly baked, with dainty macaron feet!

I made regular round macarons with the leftover batter. The macarons were filled with homemade raspberry-lemon curd, ube-macapuno (purple yam-coconut sport) and salted caramel.

filling, filling, filling

Princess Aurora & Rapunzel macarons

The cake pops are chocolate cake pops, dipped in melted white chocolate, dyed purple and pink. The Rapunzel and Aurora toppers were printed on photo paper and attached onto the lollipop sticks with transparent tape.

Princess cake pops

food labels printed on photo paper

The shells for the mini fruit tarts are shortcrust pastry, individually cut and pressed into the tart moulds and baked until slightly browned. The tarts are filled with white chocolate-cream cheese ganache, and topped with fresh raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and kiwi slices. I brushed the fruits with a piping gel glaze to give them a nice shine and to protect them from drying out.

mini fruit tarts

white-chocolate cream cheese mini fruit tarts

Since it was a double birthday, and I wanted to avoid making two birthday cakes, I decided that Rapunzel would have a donut tower instead of a birthday cake. I made the purple roof for the tower out of strips of fondant, scored lightly with the back of the knife to give it a shingled kind of look. I also made a little fondant flag with a number 5 on it, and stuck it onto a lollipop stick to put on top of the tower.

Rapunzel Donut Tower

I got strawberry-white chocoalte donuts from Breka Bakery, and stacked them on a paper towel holder! I covered the base of the paper towel holder in green fondant, and stood the birthday girl's name up in front, using some stiff royal icing. I also attached fondant flowers all around the donuts using the royal icing. The purple roof simply sat on top of
the tower, with the flag flying high. Easy peasy Rapunzel Donut Tower Birthday "cake".

lots of fresh sliced strawberries!

a sprinkling of snowflakes

The birthday cake was Ice Skating-themed, with a touch of Princess Aurora. The cake was purple and pink layers of fresh strawberry chiffon cake, filled with strawberry jam, fresh sliced strawberries, chantilly cream and strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream, frosted rustic-style and with a white chocolate ganache drip. I added powdered white food colouring to the white chocolate ganache to brighten it up, since white chocolate naturally has a yellowish tinge to it.

white chocolate ganache drip, rustic buttercream finish

Ice Skating-Princess Aurora Birthday Cake

I made a 2D cutout of an ice skate to top the cake, painting the skate blade with Rolkem silver dust mixed with a little rum (I didn't have vodka) to give it a nice shine. To join the ice skate on top of the cake, there were a couple of purple chocolate sails, macarons, meringue kisses, and sprinkling of fondant snowflakes, and a little toy Princess Aurora on top.

Ice skate fondant topper

All these pink and purple desserts went on this Princess Aurora-Rapunzel-themed dessert table, with a sprinkling of ice skating.

pink and purple Princess Aurora & Rapunzel dessert table

I got the pink tutu from One and Only Gallery and it was perfect to put in the front of the table. I had actually made a Rapunzel braid out of yellow yarn but completely forgot to bring it to the party!

Happy family photo :)

birthday "cakes"

The other props included dried flowers, a string of faux flowers a mini white Christmas tree and a jewelry holder, which the snowflake sugar cookies were hung from.

princess cake pops

princess character macarons

white chocolate-cream cheese mini fruit tarts

pink and purple macarons

The goodie bags were filled with potted Primula plants, princess slap bracelets, princess glow-in-the-dark bracelets and ring pops.

shopping for plants & party food!

princess goodie bags

The girls had a super fun time celebrating their milestone birthdays with our family and friends! And they were so excited to meet the real-life princess Aurora and be showered with Pixie dust birthday wishes! Happy 5th Birthday Princess Gabrielle! Happy 7th Birthday, Princess Cayleigh!