Challenge No 8 - Tangled / Rapunzel Cake and Dessert Table

My 3year old's best friend, Miss Lucy turned 3 and after catching sight of one of Marley's birthday cakes we had with my family, she wanted nothing else than a Rapunzel themed birthday party. So I set out to fulfil that wish for her.

Unfortunately her licensed Table cloth, plates, napkins and banner didn't arrive and got lost in the mail, that have resent it but that arrived a month late.... so now I have spares for the next Tangled Party! Any takers?

CAKE

The cake was the most fun to create.  I made it in 3 coloured layers, flavouring each layer to match
Mauve - Grape
Yellow - Lemon
Pink - Raspberry

Put together with double lemon buttercream (in lilac).  And the tower was created using chocolate cupcakes, with 2 skewers holding them together on top of the cake. The piped the mauve buttercream all over to blend them together.  I printed off some edible icing sheets with images that i used such as Rapunzel in the window on the tower.  The roof of the tower was a miniature ice cream cone, and then coated in Candy Melts and covered it in purple Wilton jumbo sprinkles.  I then piped out all of the green with the grass tip. And the name was made from fondant with cutters.

COOKIES

I decided to go with a sun/star shape that resembled the symbol in the movie for the "lost princess", I kept them simple as I was making the entire dessert table contents, so I just covered them in mauve fondant. I printed off two different Tangled images onto edible icing discs and adhered them to the fondant and then sprinkled in gold edible glitter for effect and tied them in cello bags.

JELLY + MARSHMALLOW CUPS

I just made a simple creaming soda flavoured jelly in a 3 litre container/bowl, set it for 6 hours (preferably overnight) and then diced it up and filled some mauve crystal plastic dishes for added princess sparkle.  I topped each dish with a scoop of marshmallow topping and added matching sprinkles.

CUPCAKES

I adapted a recipe from a great blog, called Always With Butter.

RECIPE:
1 1/4 cups Plain (all purpose) Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Ground Ginger
1/2 tsp Ground Nutmeg
1/2 tsp All Spice
1/2 tsp Ground Cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups Castor Sugar
6 Tbsp Butter - melted and cooled
2 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
1 cup Pumpkin Puree
1/3 cup Water

Preheat oven to 180 (or 350) degrees. Line cupcake pan with wrappers.

Sift all the dry ingredients into a medium bowl and set aside.  Place butter and sugar in mixing bowl and cream using mixer on medium.  Add in an egg at a time to the mixer, then the vanilla and beat it well.

Add the pumpkin puree (I make my own from fresh pumpkin and boil it in saucepan of water until it is soft enough to put through a food processor and liquefy) and mix thoroughly.

Add the dry ingredients in three parts to wet mixture until just mixed through. Do not over beat.

Spoon mixture into cupcake papers, filling approx  two thirds full.  Bake for 20 minutes.

Makes 12-20 small cupcakes or 12 large (muffin size) cupcakes.

1st Birthdays & Nick Junior’s Ollie!

A close girlfriend asked me if I would make the cake and cookie favours for her only son’s 1^st Birthday, there is no time more special except the birth of that child!  I was completely flattered and honoured to be asked to do such a wonderful task.

I was told he absolutely loves Ollie... who I hear you ask... that was my reaction... who is Ollie?? I have a 2 year old and she has no idea who he is! Am I a bad mother? Well after much investigation, he is the muppet that is owned by Sesame Street, but is only in Foxtel’s Nick Junior Channel, he pretty much compares the channel!! Nice job but given the situation, nothing out there is the world of buying party or licensed products on the little dude! Thanks Sesame Street!! 

I managed after MUCH research to get an edible image of Ollie done, it also was meant to have text in the outer circle, but it didn’t get off the backing with much ease and I have to cut it down and improvise, which I much say, think it came out looking alot better, the 3D text I think gave the cake more depth.

I baked a gorgeous Butter Cake that I find foolproof from my little ole recipe book of favourites, I added orange syrup to the cake, a personal fav as I do think kids always LOVE orange cake and it always gives a very moist finish.  Under the fondant I had a layer of pineapple flavoured buttercream.  A very tropical flavour combination and received fabulous feedback from everyone, so my pick was well received.  Also  the fact that the colour palette I worked with was yellow & orange with a touch of blue, it matched the flavours.  The cookie favours were little cars, as Angelo is a little cars man, I need yellow cars for girls and blue cars for boys, all with an orange initial on them in chocolate candy writer. Once cellophane & ribboned up the cookies looked a million dollars!!

Price for Simple Personalised Cookie Favours = $3.00 each

Each child’s first initial for a favour with an extra personal touch!