Crissa's Cake Corner!: Frozen Desserts & Cake

"Let it go! Let it go!" Frozen - another Disney movie that will never die! In fact, I just watched it again for the hundredth time with my kids after dinner tonight. I really regret buying the DVD. Haaaa. Even my 20 month old can recognise Elsa. "Elsa! Elsa!" she excitedly says.

Frozen Dessert Table*

Curiously enough, with the popularity of Frozen as a birthday theme, I've never actually done a full dessert table of Frozen goodies yet... until today! My first ever Frozen cake was this 3D, 2ft tall Olaf cake that I did last year, followed by a few Frozen cakes. Today, I finally had the chance to go all out and make Frozen cupcakes, cookies, cake pops, marshmallow pops, macarons and a cake for a little girl's Frozen-themed 6th birthday party!

Frozen buttercream cake

First up, the cake! The cake is two tiers of lemon-lime cake, filled with lemon-lime curd (I love making curds. Great way to use up all those egg yolks I always have lying around from making Swiss meringue buttercream & macarons!)

lemon-lime cake with lemon-lime curd filling

To decorate the cake, I dyed vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream this lovely shade of blue, using SugarFlair's Icy Blue food gel. I iced both tiers as I regularly would, nice and smooth, using a spatula and a scraper. But to give the cake an icy effect, I had to "mess up" the buttercream with the back of a spoon! I actually winced at the first few strokes cuz I'm so used to having a smooth finish for cakes!

love the "melty" effect

For "melty icicles" on the cake, I used a 15-second consistency of royal icing and piped it on the top with a no. 12 round piping nozzle. I discovered that I had to pipe the royal icing in layers, leaving a gap in between each "icicle", piping a complete circle around the cake, before going back in and piping two more layers, letting the icing set up a little between each layer, so that the icicles wouldn't just meld into each other.

glittery fondant lettering

Using some snowflake plunger cutters, I cut snowflakes out of fondant and stuck them onto the cake. When sticking fondant details on a buttercream cake, one has to do it immediately after removing the cake from the fridge into an air-conditioned room (damn the humidity here in the tropics!), before the condensation happens on the cake, or only after all the condensation has evaporated (which means the buttercream has warmed up to room temp. and you gotta be more gentle when you press the fondant deco on so you don't make a big crater in your buttercream). I prefer the former, because I'm just not gentle (or patient enough to wait). If you stick the fondant deco on somewhere in between, when the condensation has formed on the cake and has not yet fully evaporated, then all your fondant decorations will just slide off and mess up your cake.

the finished cake, waiting for toy toppers

Of course, with Frozen, adding glitter is a must! I made a glittery fancy number 6 to go in the centre of the top tier, and covered the birthday message with the same baby blue disco dust for that extra sparkle. The cake would be topped with Frozen toy figurines at the venue cuz I didn't want them falling off during transport.

super cute Frozen cake pops*

The cake pops were chocolate cake, crumbled and swirled with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. The last time I made Frozen cake pops, I put the cake on top of the stick. This time around, it was easier to have "upside down" cake pops, so they stand on their own on a pretty serving plate, and we don't have to worry about making a cake pop stand. I used melted white compound chocolate, coloured with a few drops of candy oil, to dip the cake pops in. I added dried blueberry buttons on Olaf to give him a 3D effect. The super cute paper toppers were done by Sugarena. Elsa is in that perfect "icy blast" pose and I love Olaf's delicate twig arms and hair!

cute snowman cupcake paper & glittery blue cupcake wrappers

The cupcakes were lemon cupcakes, frosted with a swirl of lemon-zested vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I bought these fancy, princess-y, glittery blue cupcake wrappers to put around the cupcakes (do you like the super cute snowman cupcake liners I used? Leftover cupcake paper from last Christmas!) These glittery cupcakes were perfect for this Frozen theme, topped with a large fondant snowflake.

finished off with a swirl of frosting & a snowflake*

Now for the sugar cookies, I made snowflakes, no. 6s and Anna & Elsa dresses. To decorate the snowflake cookies, I used white fondant for the background, and then piped on royal icing in a snowflake pattern, sprinkling the wet royal icing with baby blue disco dust for that fancy, glittery effect. And to push it up a notch, I piped on more royal icing in the middle and sprinkled on some blue sanding sugar, which added a nice contrast to the white snowflake. A trick I discovered is, after sprinkling the sugar on, you gotta use the side of a toothpick to push the (still wet) sugar-covered royal icing into a straight line, so that the sugar crystals line up neatly. Otherwise, you will end up with a rather messy, random arrangement (which is of course ok if that's the effect you are going for!)

decorating the snowflake cookies

I had pre-made holes in the sugar cookie so that I could thread a fancy white ribbon through them and hang them up like ornaments! If you want to have cookie ornaments (would be so perfect for a Christmas tree!), you gotta make sure to punch a hole in your sugar cookie cut outs (I just used a round piping nozzle) before you bake them. If you do forget, you can try and make holes in the cookies as soon as you remove them from the oven, while they are still relatively soft and warm. If you try to do it after the cookies have cooled to a crisp, you will end up breaking your cookies (at which point, you should just eat your losses and make a new batch.)

snowflake cookie ornaments

To decorate the no. 6 cookies, I used a light blue fondant base, added some royal icing "melty" snow and a white snowflake. My favourite cookies were Anna & Elsa's dresses! For Anna's dress, I cut the pieces out of different colours of fondant using the dress cookie cutter and a knife, and then added details like the trim, the pattern on the top of the dress and the flowers using royal icing. For Elsa's dress, using the same dress cookie cutter, I cut a dress out of blue fondant, and then brushed the top section with some water and sprinkled blue sanding sugar on it. For the bottom part of the dress, I used a vein tool to mark off the sides of the dress, brushed those parts with a little water, and sprinkled baby blue disco dust on it to give it that extra sparkle!

no. 6 & princess dress cookies

The macarons were filled with dark chocolate ganache. They actually came out a different shade of blue after baking, than the shade of blue that the macaron batter was in before baking! I mean, yes, I know that colour in macarons fade a little after baking, but geez, these guys turned almost a shade of green instead of blue!

dark chocolate ganache filling

Each macaron was topped off with a small fondant snowflake, using a little bit of water as glue. I love the fancy silver mirrored serving platter that they were displayed on!

lovely macarons*

My fave dessert on the table were these super cute Olaf cookie-marshmallow pops! Olaf's head is a sugar cookie, decorated with fondant, all hand-cut using a very sharp Xacto knife cuz I didn't have an Olaf head cookie cutter. Each of his tiny twig hairs are little snakes of dark chocolate fondant, and I made sure to make indentations on his orange nose, just like a carrot! I threaded marshmallows onto an 8" lollipop stick, rubbing a teeny bit of shortening on the end of the stick so that the marshmallows easily glide on and don't become misshapen from force. I used royal icing to stick the cookie heads onto the stick, and also for the dried blueberry buttons.

Olaf cookie-marshmallow pops

All these Frozen-inspired desserts were featured on this fabulous Frozen-themed dessert table, styled by the talented Sugarena. I love the cool blues and snowy details, which give a magical frosty feel to this dreamy Frozen table. It's everything the Frozen-loving birthday girl, Ashely, could want for her 6th birthday celebration!

Frozen Dessert Table*

The fancy white wooden tree was the perfect prop to hang the snowflake sugar cookie-ornaments from, making a nice background for the Frozen cake centrepiece.