Frozen-Rainbow Birthday Party!

Since my girls' birthdays are within a week apart, we decided this year, to do a combined celebration. I kept the younger one's 1st birthday separate last year, cuz everyone needs to have their own first birthday celebration in my opinion! Anyway, my elder girl had been bugging me for a Frozen party since the movie came out. Last year, I convinced her to have a Minnie Mouse party, but Frozen is inevitable... The younger one just learned how to identify the colours of the "wane-bow" so I thought that that would be the perfect theme for her. So there we go, one Frozen-Rainbow party, coming right up! (Warning, this is an epic long post!! Thanks for reading :)

Ready for our Frozen-Rainbow birthday!

I always get really excited over parties. After all, that is what I do! So for the girls, I had to whip up a whole bunch of treats and arrange a dessert table. There were cupcakes, two kinds of cake pops, sugar cookies, chocolate covered Oreos, macarons and two birthday cakes!

Frozen-Rainbow Dessert Table!

For the cupcakes, we had red velvet and lemon, both frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, in "rings" of rainbow colours! I saw this cupcake design a while back and had been waiting for an opportunity to try it. Since Gabi's cake would be rainbow anyway, there was lots of colourful frosting already made, which made this job a lot easier. Dyeing frosting takes a while, especially if you are, like me, only using one bowl and one spatula, with lots of washing in between colours. To frost the cupcakes, use a large round nozzle (I used no. 12) and pipe a circle of frosting on your cupcake, working from purple to red frosting, making the circles smaller as you go up. Yes, this kind of design has a large frosting to cupcake ratio, but I really liked the rainbow colours! They're topped with a touch of snowflake, of course.

Lemon Cupcakes with Rainbow Frosting

I made two different kinds of cake pops, both of which were made with rainbow vanilla cake! I baked up vanilla cake, dyed 5 different colours, and then crumbled and swirled them individually with Swiss meringue buttercream, in the same technique as the Angry Birds rainbow cake pops here.

shaping rainbow cake balls

first coat of white chocolate

 I decorated some of them with coloured sanding sugar and Wilton snowflake sprinkles. The others were made into Frozen character cake pops, topped with super awesome Elsa, Anna and Olaf paper toppers from Sugarena. I probably could print and cut all these details paper toppers myself, but it would be a nightmare cutting out Olaf's hands!

two kinds of cake pops!

For the sugar cookies, I cut snowflakes and dresses out of my favourite sugar cookie recipe and decorated them with a combination of fondant, royal icing, sanding sugar and disco dust. I made sure to punch holes in the snowflakes (using a round piping nozzle) before baking them, so that I could thread ribbons through them and display them as snowflake cookie ornaments. I think it's really convenient to use fondant as the base of the cookie instead of having to do flood icing, especially since you can just use the same snowflake and dress cookie cutters to cut out the fondant. 

Snowflake cookie ornaments with a touch of colour

Elsa & Anna dress cookies

Instead of doing the usual round chocolate-covered Oreos, I scored a rectangular Olaf silicone mould on sale from Michael's. I pretty much just followed the instructions on the box and used Wilton candy melts, melting them right in the mold in the microwave. I really really hate Wilton candy melts because they are so gosh darn thick. 

Wilton candy melts are way too thick

And this time wasn't any different. No, I did not overheat the chocolate. I melted them in the microwave at half power in 30 second intervals. It was a nightmare spreading them flat in the mould, and no matter how hard I tapped them against the counter, there was no getting the trapped air bubbles out. Note to self, use white chocolate next time, cuz the candy melts are just not worth the frustration for a substandard result. Boo to the air bubbles. The broken up Oreo pieces were added in between the blue and white confetti candy melts and everything was refrigerated for about 20 mins before they were set and could be popped out of the mould with ease.

annoying air bubble holes

The macarons were done "rainbow swirl" style like these macarons, by painting stripes on the inside of the piping bag with food gel colouring before adding in the white macaron batter and then pipping out the macarons as usual. They're filled with dark chocolate ganache. 

rainbow swirl macarons

Finally, for the birthday cakes, I went with the "lazy" watercolour buttercream style for both cakes. For my little princess' Frozen cake, I baked up a moist vanilla butter cake, filled with vanilla bean crème Mousseline and raspberries. 

juicy red raspberries

vanilla bean crème Mousseline

To decorate, I added splotches of white and shades of blue buttercream all around the cake using a piping bag, and then I smoothed the cake as usual, taking off all the excess buttercream and smoothening sides and top. 

buttercream splotches

nice and smooth watercolour effect

I used 20-second consistency royal icing for the drip on top, like melty snow. To garnish the cake, I used shades of blue and white macarons, and a funky isomalt sculpture! Yup, a foray into the world of isomalt. 

Frozen "lazy drip" abstract cake with isomalt sculptures

I literally just watched this YouTube video and followed the simple instructions to make the isomalt: mix 1 lb of isomalt crystals and 3/4 cup of distilled water in a pot. Heat to 340F without stirring. 

cook 'til it reaches 340F

Stop the cooking process by submerging the bottom of the pot in cold water. Add food colouring, if desired. Pour it onto silicone mats or moulds and shape when it's cool enough to handle.

silcone-moulded isomalt roses

spot the isomalt dragon

crazy isomalt shards sculpture

et voila! "Frozen" isomalt

I made the isomalt sculptures in advance and stored it in a ziplock bag for a week and it was fine. I also did an experiment to see what would happen if I left it out exposed to the heat and humidity of the tropics, for a week. Basically, the stuff in the ziplock bag looked exactly as I did when I first made it. The stuff that was left exposed quickly absorbed the humidity in the air, and the isomalt went all cloudy, pale and brittle. Still looked cool, though.

Pipe rings of rainbow buttercream

Now for the rainbow cake, I frosted it in rainbow buttercream stripes using the same watercolour technique as this cake. I added a white chocolate ganache drip and garnished the cake with lots of colourful macarons, fresh Rainer cherries, figs, strawberries, grapes and a touch of snowflake. 

smoothen with bench scraper

Infinity Anna finally made an appearance too (I had bought her together with Infinity Elsa, which I used for this Mad Science Frozen cake). The rainbow cake was a lychee martini chiffon cake, filled with vodka-soaked lychees. (Well, yea, this was an adult-only flavour, but I figured the kids could have a slice of the Frozen cake. Haaa).

vodka-soaked lychee filling

Rainbow cake with lots of colourful macarons & fresh fruits

I'm so happy to have friends like the folks behind Lovewithdetails, One and Only Gallery and Candylicious Bakes to lend me some of their fabulous tableware and cake stands to do up the dessert table! Normally I only provide the bakes, but today I tried to put on a new hat and try my hand at styling! Haa. I even printed out customized food labels and brought all of my daughters' Frozen figurines to add to the table. All that was missing was a big banner on the wall. 

Frozen-Rainbow desserts

Frozen-Rainbow food labels with lots of Frozen characters

colourful Rainbow cake with a  touch of Frozen

like the snowflake cookie tree there in the back?

Abstract Frozen drip cake

fancy sugar cookie dresses

Elsa, Anna & Olaf cake pops

Rainbow-Frozen cake pops

Custom-labelled Kit-Kats

chocolate-covered Oreos

The party was held at Tickle Tickle's new branch at Junction 10. It's a pretty decent little playground for kids under 6 years old. There's a role play area, moving swings to ride on, a ball pit with a slide, some ride-on toys, an air hockey & foosball table and a small trampoline. We rearranged the tables in the party area to have the dessert table, the finger food table, a craft table and a presents/giveaways table. 

Just swinging'

crafting snowflake ornaments

Elsa cut-out prop

I managed to snag a couple rolls of snowflake-patterned wrapping paper over Christmas and used that  to cover the tables with! Since the party was during tea time, there was a small selection of finger food available, like cheese & cocktail sausages, rainbow kueh lapis, rainbow fruit skewers (gotta give props to my hubby for doing a good job on the skewering!), spinach dip with crackers, chips and juice boxes. Oh and I also made custom-labelled "Melted Snow" bottles! ;)

happy birthday girl with the finger food

For the party giveaways, I found these perfect rainbow striped paper bags from Party Express. I added some snowflake stickers to them and boom! Frozen-Rainbow goodie bags! Inside the bags there were: Frozen fruit snacks, Frozen milk boxes, Frozen tattoos, rainbow coloured pencils, custom-labelled kit-kat bars & rainbow coconut fruit jelly, and for the babies, anti-bacterial wipes & teething biscuits too. Oh I made full use of the boxes that the fruit snacks came in, and cut out the cartoons and used them as props on the dessert table too!

Loot Bags & presents table

Frozen-Rainbow goodies inside

characters cut out from the fruit snacks boxes!

My girls and all their little friends couldn't be happier with their Frozen-Rainbow party! One of Cayleigh's classmates, who's mommy runs All Mommy Wants, even got her a giant 57" Elsa airwalker balloon! It was bigger than she was! I got the girls matching rainbow tulle skirts to go with the matching Elsa dresses they both got from my sisters over Christmas. But the younger one wasn't in a cooperative mood and refused to wear her skirt! Oh well. 

Yes, this was the "best" family pic of the bunch

vanilla bean-raspberry cake

lychee martini cake

Happy 2nd and happy 4th birthdays to my two little big girls! Guess which one is the ice queen and which one is a happy bubbly rainbow!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Gabi!

Happy 4th Birthday, Cayleigh!
(love the fake Elsa braid)