One more Frozen cake

You have to hand it to Disney.  They know how to hook the wee ones with their movies.  When my daughter was young, it was The Little Mermaid.  Now, my granddaughter is 6, and she is obsessed with the movie Frozen.  When I say she is obsessed, I mean it.  The girl is hardcore.  She is about as girlie as they come.  She loves to play dress-up and wear a tiara.  She recites the movie when she is playing with her dolls like she is re-enacting the movie.  Then comes the singing.....oh, the singing.  It's actually more like screaming...like those of you on the West Coast need to hear her singing in order for the world to stay on its axis.  There are arm motions and choreography to go along with the vocals.

So...my granddaughter turned 6 in mid November.  When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she looked at me with that tilted head and her hand on her hip and said "Oh Mimi, you know I want a Disney Frozen cake."  As if there might actually be other Frozen merchandise out there, she feels she needs to specify that it's Disney Frozen.

I asked my daughter to sit down with my granddaughter and decide what they wanted to see on the cake and they were more than happy to comply.  Of course Elsa was on the top, of course it was blue, of course there were sparkly bits.

I was actually pretty excited to make this cake because it gave me the opportunity to try some new techniques.  I did cheat and got the actual dolls to add to the cake as I was not going to take the time or the chance actually that I would not get the look right.  The 6 year-old would call me out in a heartbeat....just as she had when she turned 4 and I made cupcakes with frosting the color of all the Disney princess dresses and I happened to forget the green one, whomever she may be.  Ugh..the innocence of youth.

Anyway...this was the final product.  She loved it.  The other little girls at her party loved it.  I was once again a rock star in my granddaughter's world.....which is the absolute best place to be.

Mermaid cake and cupcakes

My son's high school marching band did a show about mermaids and how they are thought to have lured sailors to their deaths.  At the end of the marching season, one of the color guard moms asked me to bake some cupcakes for their end-of-season party.  I went to work making up the scene.

I decided to do a small cake to look like a rock with some mermaids sitting on it...and then make cupcakes to surround that rock.  I thought it would be cool to add some fondant in the shape of a shipwreck to put in some of the cupcakes.

I cheated and used box mix cakes.  Our local Walmart sells basic chocolate and vanilla for $1.00 per box.  I doctored up both batters so they wouldn't taste like box mixes.  I made both a vanilla and chocolate cake in a 9 x 13 pan, which I would later use to build my rock.  I then covered it with gray fondant.

I molded some teal fondant for the mermaids and used a piping tip to create the scales.  Then, I used a combination of pink, blue, purple and silver luster dust to paint over the mermaids to give them an iridescent sheen.

I baked my cupcakes and decorated them to look like waves.  I even piped white on some of the cupcakes to look like breakers in the water.  I molded brown fondant in my wooden board mold and then gave it dimension by painting over the brown with some black.

My friend, who ordered the cupcakes, stopped by my house the day I was working on them.  She had no idea what I had up my sleeve and she all but squealed with delight.  She couldn't wait to surprise the girls with their treat.  The next day, she came to pick up the cupcakes and promised to call me and let me know what the girls thought.

Sure enough, my phone rang like a half an hour later.  It was my friend's number.  When I answered, it was the entire color guard, 20 girls strong, saying thank you.  It just made my day.  It fills my heart with joy that I could give them a treat like this.

Here is the final product...