As you may know by now I was in charge of the dessert table for my nephew's birthday party. The party was Mickey Mouse Clubhouse themed so naturally I started googling “Mickey Mouse & Desserts”. The first dessert that I came across was the most adorable Mickey Mouse cookies. The iconic mickey ears and head frosted in a cool black icing were exactly what I wanted for my dessert table. I knew my nephew would go crazy over them.
Black icing- Is it possible?
Before I could make the cookies I needed to find out how I was going to make black icing. From experience I knew that it was not very easy to get a true black color when trying to make black frosting. While shopping at Michaels I picked up the Wilton black gel food coloring and tried it with the icing recipe below. I'm not sure if it is because I added too much coloring or if it was the product itself but it had a funny taste. After doing some research online I found that others had encountered the same problem with this food coloring. I was still determined to find a good black food coloring I mean I could not have been the first person that wanted to create black icing. After a little more digging I found amazing reviews for Americolors brand of gel icing. They are known for being able to deliver vibrant deep food coloring without the weird after taste you find with difficult colors such as black and red. I ordered my tube of super black at amazon.com and I was good to go on that front.
Finding the best recipe
My next order of business was to find the best sugar cookie recipe. I have tried a number of recipes over the years and even though they were good (I would munch on them of course, maybe that is why I have to do the insanity workouts now :) )I still wasn't satisfied with my results. I found the highest rated sugar cookie recipe on allrecipes.com and then experimented a little with it. I changed the amount of sugar, type of extract and rolled these out with powered sugar instead of flour. The final result was a chewy, sweet and delicious sugar cookie. Read more
I was in charge of making the cupcakes for my nephew's birthday party last weekend. My mom wanted to order a cake in addition to the 48 cupcakes and with that revelation my “dessert table” was created. Maybe it was the fact I had given up sweets for lent but I started coming up with a million different desserts I could make for the party. I was starting to go a little over the top in my ideas that I finally sat down and thought about what I could actually make. During this sit down, I came up with the best 3 projects that would make the most impact yet be easy to transport and complete. They are homemade mickey mouse cupcakes, mickey mouse head cookies and the project I am writing about today, chocolate covered sprinkle pretzels.
This is a ridiculously easy recipe. I am sure if you wanted to get gourmet you could complicate it out but for the purpose it was achieving (delicious and easy) this recipe gets 10 stars. I ended up making 48 chocolate dipped pretzel rods which is about two bags of Snyder’s pretzels. I used three 12oz bags of semisweet chocolate chips however if you want them a bit sweeter you can used milk chocolate instead. I found that the semisweet chocolate had a really nice flavor paired with the salty pretzel. Since I used the colored sugars it was sweet without it being overly sugary. The colors for the party were red, blue and yellow. I divided the pretzels evenly and sugared them so that I had three groups of 16 pretzels in each color. Looking back I think I would try using white chocolate for the pretzels instead of milk so that the color of the sugars show up more vibrantly on the table.
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We have one grandchild in our family. My sister had my amazing nephew 3 years ago and since then our family has been in a full on love affair with him. He is also the only one of two grandchildren on his fathers side so needless to say he is flowered over constantly. He is really blessed to have loving grandmothers on both sides.
My mother loves to plan parties and after an over the top 1st birthday we convinced her to only throw a big party every other year with a small party at Chuck E Cheese on the even years. This gave her more time to think about the party she wanted to throw for his birthday this year :).
It wasn't until my mom said that she wanted to throw him a party based on his favorite TV show, The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, that I even knew that was back on TV. I envisioned the live action show that gave Christina Aquilera, Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears their starts. When I finally watched it I could see why my nephew so loved the show.
We wanted to recreate many aspects from the show as closely as possible so that he and his friends felt like they were actually in the show during the party. My task was to help with the invitations and make all the desserts for the cake table. Now that the party is over I wanted to share my favorite projects so that if you are planning a mickey or Minnie mouse party for your little one it will make it a little easier.
This first project is one of my favorites. My mom searched the internet high and low for creative DIY invitations we could make to set the tone for the party. Many projects involved a couple paper plates to make mickey's face which was really cool. My mom wanted to build off of that idea and create something a little different. That is when she came up with the 3-D Mickey head invitation. It is pretty easy and really makes an impact. Handing these out created an excitement with the guests who couldn't wait to go to the party. The steps are below so that you can create the same invitation for your party.
The How To
Supplies
4 inch smooth service Styrofoam ball (We bought ours from Sears.com)
Black acrylic paint
2 Woodsies craft picks-3 ½ (can be found here: JoAnn Fabrics )
Craft glue
Black construction paper
Paint brush
Plastic cups
White paint marker
Directions
Put Styrofoam ball in the plastic cup. Using your paint brush paint the exposed part with the black paint. Set aside to completely dry. Once dry rotate ball so that the unpainted side is exposed. Paint with black paint and let dry. In the meantime, cut four 2-inch circles (4 circles per invitation) out of the black construction paper. Write out invitation information (location etc) on two of the four pieces with the white paint marker let dry. Put down black circles without writing on a flat service. Place craft pick down with half sticking out of the bottom. Cover with a thin layer of glue. Center the two other circles with the writing facing towards you on top. Press down making sure all of the sides are even. Let dry. Once dry it's time to assemble the invitations (Yay!). Make two holes where mickey's ears would be in the Styrofoam with a pair of scissors. Stick the “ears” in and you are done.
