Disney's Frozen is simply incredible - its witty, wonderful and deeply engaging. Moreover, the songs are incredibly infectious. But it was the bond between the sisters which inspired me to make this home made Frozen Chocolate Biscuit Cake in honor of my second daughter's christening.
Her older sister (now age 3) is Frozen obsessed and knows almost all the words to the songs. Like most parents we've watched it countless times and, like most younger sisters, little Lila is at the mercy her couch-commando older sister! Thankfully at 9 months old she loves the colours, graphics, movement and singing, and happily claps along with Adelaide, absolutely mesmerized.
With a 1kg lump of store bought royal icing and a chocolate biscuit cake I had made the day before, I set about making Ana, Elsa and Olaf. At Craftea, and at our CrafteaParties, we're well used to playing and working with salt dough. Salt dough modelling one of our favorite crafts - its easy to make and fun to sculpt, create and mould almost anything out of. ....So how different could a mound of white icing be I thought? Turns out, not much different. It's manageable with some patience, plus you can eat little pieces along the way.
Note: you'll see in the photos below that a lot of time passed as I was making the three figures. It took about 4 hours in total spread across an evening, the next morning (you'll see Lila's breakfast bowl), afternoon and later that evening... much later - and you'll notice the glass of wine was out after the kids were asleep.
So... first off, the underlying cake. With some short time to make my Frozen characters that week I was in no mood to bake a cake. As all the family love chocolate biscuit cake, it was the obvious no-bake choice. I mixed up a simple recipe by adding some treats like meringue and chocolate fudge cake - with Oreos and plenty of marshmallows to give it a Rocky Road texture and taste.
Rocky Road Chocolate Biscuit Cake
In a large bowl mix
- 1x 200g bag Mini Marshmallows
- 200g Chocolate Fudge Cake (large crumbs/chunks). I used half of a Coolmore Chocolate Cake which is amazing!! www.coolmorefoods.ie
- 2 x 150g packet Chocolate Digestive Biscuits
- 1 x 150g packet Oreo Cookies
- 2 bars of Cadburys Crunchie (chopped up)
- 3 small Meringue Nests (in chunks) or 30g Meringue in chunks
- Optional - Maltesers, Rolos, Fudge chunks, Raisins, Chopped Walnuts.
This recipe isn't exactly precise, so if you can fill the cake pan with these ingredients and have at least 1/3 more left over you'll have plenty of filling. You need the extra as you'll be compressing the cake into the pan once you add the chocolate and butter. Its better to have more than to be short on filling. Plus.. its no bad thing to have leftover chunks of chocolate, cake and cookies. I think they'll get eaten.
- 450g of cooking chocolate
- 250g Real Irish butter
Mix all the above together and using some baking paper, press it down firmly into a non-stick Cake Pan which has removable sides. Leave to cool for a few hours/overnight in a fridge, then gently remove the cake pan sides. Level off the cake if necessary and place on a cake board, ready to ice.
Note: I used half white chocolate and added it to half the biscuit mix, then half dark chocolate and added it to the other half of the biscuit mix.
Icing the Cake
You'll need:
- 1kg Fondant (such as Tesco's White Ready to Roll Fondant Icing )
- 500g for covering the cake
- 500g for the figures (divided into three equal size lumps)
- Approx 200g Royal Icing Sugar for dusting surfaces
- Wilton Icing Colours Gel - They do a great pack of 8 with all the colours you'll need to paint your fondant figures. Its available at HomeStore & More shops and for order on their website.
Here's how to do it! 1. Dust a clean work surface and rolling pin with royal icing sugar.
2. Roll out 500g fondant to a 16 inch circle about 1cm thick.
3. Dust with icing sugar again and roll around the rolling pin
4. Roll back over the chocolate biscuit cake and smooth down.
5. Cut off stray edges and tuck icing down as neatly as you can.
6. Leave aside in dry place.
To make Ana, Elsa and Olaf, I started off by making rough moulds of their bodies with tin foil. This saved on icing, but more importantly keeps them structurally sound and upright as the fondant can soften causing their heavy heads cause them to topple or tilt.
I worked off general pictures of the three found online from a google search.
I then covered up the tin foil moulds using about 1/2 of each lump of the fondant reserved for each character.
I smoothed it out with my hands, and though it was by no means perfect (at all, at all!) they began to take shape.
Overall the fondant was easy to work with - soft, malleable and relatively strong. When I cut a strip or rolled a piece, I was able to platt it and place it on the character with relative ease. It was only when the fondant dried out a little in the warm summer afternoon that I had to wet the piece I needed to stick on with some water and my clean paintbrushes.
It was pretty much like working with salt dough, so with some patience... A LOT of patience. It began to come together.
I then cut strips for Ana and Elsa's hairstyles, and added little decoration to their bodies - Ana wears a heaving cape when she goes searching for Elsa and Elsa has a glamorous light gown when she lives in her ice castle. I never got around to making the flowing gown on Elsa but it would have just involved another light strip of fondant secured to her neck and draped around her back.
I did this all using the white fondant, and then using some clean paint brushes I painted on the icing gel colours. I love the Wilton multi pack as it contains all these colours
pink + yellow gave me a warm skin colour. I painted Ela slightly paler than Ana.
brown for Ana's hair. I also mixed this with a tint of the red to give her hair an auburn glow 
Orange for Olaf's carrot nose
Red for Elsa's cape ( i know this looks ink but its actually the Wilton Christmas Red) 
pink for their lips and blush
teal (made with green and blue) for Elsa's dress
I also used the blue for their eyes. 
Voilet for Ana's dress 
... and of course black for their eyes, Olaf's buttons and features.
(the wine was out by this point :o)
Olaf is much more simple, and I washed some tiny grassy twigs found in the garden to stick in his body for arms and in his head for his tuft of hair.
But I got there in the end...
I finished off the cake by placing the figures on top. I rolled up some small white pieces into snow balls and placed them along the bottom of the cake. then the final touch was to add a drip of some teal gel to the last pieces of fondant and rolling it through the fondant. I curled up the letters of my baby girl's name directly onto the cake and used the last bits to make teal snow balls.
Finally, I shook some tiny white sprinkles all over the cake to cover up my uneven icing, but it worked out pretty nicely as if it was tiny balls of falling fluffy snow.
It was worth the work that went into it - even though it was frustrating at times, overall it was really enjoyable. Fondant is very forgiving to fumbling hands and it was pretty easy to fix mistakes. Painting the gel colours on was probably the hardest but keeping a cotton bud nearby to clear up splodges int he wrong places was a lifesaver.
Its only a pity now that I didn't make the characters out of salt dough and then hardened them in the oven so they'd keep forever. Now that the cake is eaten, 'm sure as much as I could bubble wrap or seal away my fondant Ana, Elsa and Olaf, they wont survive it to next week in my cupboards.
...and sure soon enough, Olaf got discovered and his nose devoured by Adelaide. But that's all part of the fun of icing and cake when you're a kid isn't it!
xxx