I love baking desserts for colourful birthday celebrations, like Up, or a Rainbow theme. This time, I got to make cookies, macarons, cake pops and cake for a sweet little girl named Pixie, celebrating her 2nd birthday with a balloon-themed party.
 |
| Balloon dessert table* |
Pixie's mummy had the ingenious idea to have all the bakes on sticks. Yup, cookie pops, macaron pops and cake pops, to make them look like balloons on string! I rolled out my trusted sugar cookie dough slightly thicker so that I could stick the lollipop stick into the dough before baking up the cookies. You have to make sure that the lollipop stick is completely covered with cookie dough or the cookie might fall off the stick later on after it's been baked, so patch up any cracks that happen to form in the unbaked cookie when you insert the stick in, using a little of the extra dough.
 |
| Cute & colourful balloon cookies |
To decorate the cookie pops, I cut out fondant balloons using the same balloon-shape cookie cutter as I used for the cookies, attached them onto the cookies using a little bit of water, and then added the white "reflection" on the sides of each balloon using some royal icing. You can also use piping gel or apricot glazing gel to attach the fondant onto the cookies for a little added flavour.
 |
| rainbow maacarons |
For the macarons, I free-hand piped them into "balloon" shapes instead of the regular round shape. I probably should have used a template as a piping guide so that they all would've all been identical. Hmm..balloons come in all sorts of shapes and sizes right? Haaa.
 |
| making dark chocolate macaron pops |
I filled the rainbow-coloured macarons with dark chocolate ganache, using a 1:1 ratio of heavy cream to dark chocolate for the ganache so that it would set up nice and stiff. Before sandwiching each cookie, I pressed a lollipop stick into the ganache, about 3/4 of the way up. Boom, balloon macaron pops, done!
 |
| ROYGBV balloons macaron pops |
 |
| view from the top - balloon macaron pops! |
I did do some experimenting since this was my first time making macaron pops. For the first batch, I lay lollipop sticks directly on the parchment-paper lined baking tray and then piped the macaron batter on top of the sticks, and then baked them all in the oven. The macarons turned out ok, without any cracks, but you can see the bump where the lollipop stick is. So in the end, I decided to bake the macarons first and insert the sticks in the ganache instead.
 |
| experimental batch with the sticks baked in the batter |
The birthday cake was 3 layers of the popular Devil's Food cake, filled with whipped dark chocolate ganache. After making sure to ice the cake smooth with buttercream, I covered it with yummy Masa Ticino Tropic fondant, and then stuck on fondant balloon cut-outs, in five different colours.
 |
| balloon-covered cake |
To complete the balloons, I coloured some royal icing grey with a little bit of black food gel and piped on a string at the bottom of each balloon. The top view of the cake looks pretty cool, with all the colours bordering the cake.
 |
| royal icing balloon strings |
 |
| view from the top |
I didn't manage to take a picture of the cake with the fondant rainbow name and paper topper on it cuz I had more cakes to deliver, but thankfully, Pixie's mummy snapped this pic for me. I love the overall colourful, whimsical look of this cake! I'm glad she was able to somehow get another number 2 candle, because in my rush, I totally forgot to pass one to her!
 |
| colourful balloon birthday cake* |
Oh yes, I also got to make red velvet cake pops, dipped in white chocolate dyed 5 rainbow colours, to match the cookie pops and the macaron pops and the cake. The birthday girl's mummy got this neat cake pop stand that makes the cake pop balloons pop out at every which direction, which is perfect for this balloon theme.
 |
| balloon cake pops* |
 |
| balloon macaron pops* |
 |
| balloon cookie pops* |
 |
| the birthday girl!* |
I love the colourful set-up done by the birthday girl's mummy! Pixie has such a big smile on her cute little face and she looks like she really loved the colours too! The bright colours of all the bakes are more than enough to bring this theme to life. But, to top it all off, there were a gazillion helium balloons that Pixie's mummy let loose in the party space! They totally complete the look and make it a balloon wonderland party!! Happy 2nd Birthday, sweet Pixie!
 |
| Happy 2nd Birthday, Pixie!* |
 |
| lovely, colourful balloon dessert table* |
*pics courtesy of the birthday girl's mummy
No comments:
Post a Comment