The Frozen Craze

My daughter turned 4 last year and I am just posting this now... man, time sure has flown by... been busy with our second daughter and life in general... haven't been baking too often, but I'm trying to get back to the grind! 

So before my daughter turns 5 this year, I think it would be good to post her 4th birthday cake! With my daughter in preschool and with preschool friends, for her 4th birthday, we decided on two parties - one for her and her friends and a second for the family members. 

When I asked her what kind of theme she wanted for her big fourth, she answered with the obvious answer of "Frozen". Now, I love Frozen as much as the next animation fan, so I wasn't disappointed that she had been swept up in the Frozen fever. I was excited because I get to make not one, but TWO Frozen cakes! :) 

The first one began a little like this... 

So below you'll see the lovely cake I baked. Can you guess the flavor? It was watermelon! It turns out watermelon cake is suuuuuper sweet... almost unbearably so. Probably not gonna use watermelon cake again as.. well, a cake. Maybe cupcakes or tiny cupcakes... But it did make my kitchen smell fantastic!

And genius me thought, "what goes good with watermelon cake? Watermelon frosting!!" Yeah, so that green frosting is watermelon frosting... Anywho, I had made all my fondants the night before and rolled out this lovely soft teal one (it looks a lot bluer n the picture).

 

And then I covered my cake. It's not perfectly smooth, which is okay, since it's really just a base and you really won't see much of it. I was going to shape the cake into a number 4, but I decided against it since that would be a lot more work, not look as cool, and would mean I'd have a lot more cake just sitting in my fridge...

And then I rolled out my white fondant, letting it make its own shape, where I curved all the edges - sort of looks like a cloud :)

Now that I have a random square shaped cake, I decided to use the rice krispie treats I had and shape a few into a castle! Who doesn't like a nice castle? :)

Wrapped each piece of the castle with fondant and it's starting to look more like something from Frozen... I hope.

So I didn't take a few pictures of the steps I took, but I put my cloud-like white fondant and placed it directly over my teal cake to look like a snow covered floor. I sprayed a bit of blue onto the white fondant, both marking where the castle would go and to add a pretty effect. Then I sprayed a bit of the blue on the main parts of the castle, added some white fondant around the cone pieces, used a bit of water to keep all the pieces together, and sprayed some silver along the entire castle to make it glisten a bit. (I just really wanted to play with the edible spray paints I had just bought!)

With some of the extra teal fondant, I shaped them into cones and then used a pair of scissors to snip a bit at them to give them a pine tree look. Sprayed those down with blue, and voila, trees! Sort of...

Now I hilariously tried to make some blue candy... similar to a jolly rancher. Well, as a warning, it said this would probably not work in humid conditions. It just so happens that the past couple of days before and the day I was making it, the humidity levels were at a high. So Instead of using them for ice as I initially intended, I used the gooey blue candy as an iced river and as a little door for the castle.

At one point, my ice bridge was standing, but as time went on, it slowly just melted down to the rest of the "river"... it's okay, it was still pretty delicious.

I had make purple fondant to put the number 4 on the castle and pink fondant for my daughter's name :) From one of her books came a bunch of frozen toys so I placed them around using white fondant to keep them in place. I then sprinkled the entire cake with powdered sugar for a snowy look.

This is close to midnight, so most of my photos have flash, but the one below is without it so you can see the colors a little more accurately :)

Side view!

In the daylight now! I added the two leftover cupcakes I had made for her class because.. why not?

The birthday girl in all her blurry glory! She's dressed as Elsa - the dress made by my mom :) She did have an Elsa crown, but she was whiny and didn't want to wear it... Whatever, she's the birthday girl.

It's not over yet!! I did say I made TWO cakes! :) I should've made four! Now that would've been crazy... 

Onto Cake #2!! 

Unlike the first one, this one is round! Ooooooooo.... And strawberry cake because Eevee loves her strawberry cake :) I made three of them! Two medium ones and one smaller one.. I don't know the sizes of my cake pans.... I'm guessing 9'' and 6''?

I wrapped up her Elsa doll with plastic wrap - one large one over her dress and under her feet, and another around her hair, which I then held up with a rubber band. She's going into the cake - can't have the ice queen getting all messy now, can we?

This is my careful measuring of the cake to the height of the doll.... good enough to me!

Cut a hold down the center just wide enough for her and stuck her in! Perfect fit! 

Before I frosted the cake with vanilla frosting and added the fondant, I did remove Elsa. Now she's back in and looking fabulous. 

Using more fondant, I made a random design to her dress. 

I added vanilla frosting accents around the bottom to make it look cleaner and around her torso, so you can't see the plastic wrap :) 

I had made a whole bunch of that blue jolly rancher-like candy, so I used that as her cape. I think it came out pretty well :) As for snacks for the party, I thought I was clever and made a bowl of snowman shaped marshmallows (how lucky they actually sell these!) mixed with pretzels, white chocolate covered pretzels, and Smart Food white cheddar popcorn. I also had an ice cream cake as well with Frozen toys stuck on top because what 4 year old doesn't love ice cream cake?? (and also because I wasn't sure how I could put a candle on Elsa.... probably not a good idea to mix fire with plastic....)

As for the favors for the kids, I made these cute little Make-Your-Own snowman baggies and made Olaf printouts to staple close the bags. Found carrot jelly bellies online - although they came with peas as well, so now I have a bag of jelly peas.... 

I made some easy DIY slime with glue, borax and some teal coloring - but careful, it does stick to carpet pretty well... 

And for the final touch, Frozen good bags filled with Frozen-themed treats, tattoos, pencils and whatever else I decided to put in them! Oh, and there's my daughter's tiara that she refused to wear earlier... 

Well, there you have it! Although it's almost been a full year, I finally got around to posting this! In less than a month, my daughter will turn 5 and I'll be posting another cake soon! - hopefully... 

Until next time!