Lalaloopsy Cake & Dessert Table - Toffee Cocoa Cuddles

For my daughter's 5th birthday party, she loves all things Lalaloopsy with her favorite doll being Toffee Cocoa Cuddles.  I think the dolls are a little weird with their huge plastic heads and tiny bodies but they do have cute names and stories of what they're made of behind each one of them making them special: Crumbs Sugar Cookie (made from pieces of a baking apron), Spot Splatter Splash (sewn from a painter's coveralls), and Ember Flicker Flame (made from firefighter uniform).

As for her favorite one, Toffee Cocoa Cuddles is "sewn" from pieces off a chocolate box and likes to give hugs and all things sweet.  Plus, she has a chocolate lab that has a piece bitten off his ear - how cute is that!  

If you're looking for some really cute customized party invitations, check out Etsy.  You can purchase customized digital files that you can print on your own printer making it convenient and inexpensive.  The one I purchased off Etsy below (July 2012), is no longer available.

I wanted to create a table setting for "Caitlyn's Sweet Shop" with some sweet treats for the party guests to enjoy - something I had never done before and with seeing so many pretty dessert table setups over the internet, I gave it a try.  After all the prepping and making the cake, cupcakes, cake pops, and some of the decorations, I ran out of time and didn't get all I had envisioned made for the table.

My8-year-oldd son helped make the birthday banner on the wall out of foam cutouts found at a dollar store and the button plates were inspired by Pinterest: Lalaloopsy Party Button Backdrop on Hostess with the Mostess

Another Pinterest find:  Fabric Flowers by Bete Bazzi on flickr.  I bought an assortment of fabric and cut out circles using a play dough lid as a template.  Stitched up some buttons for the centers, glued a 1/2-inch felt circle to the back, and sewed hair ties to them.  I then tied them up in pairs and put them in a heart-shaped bowl for the girls to pick from for their goody bags.  These turned out so cute.

I baked up some chocolate cake pops and stabbed the popsicle sticks into a Styrofoam block wrapped in a satin, plaid ribbon.

The button monogram "C" in the background was made by hot gluing a bunch of buttons onto a thin, canvas board with a pink, yarn boarder and buttons added to the corners. 

For the candy-filled jars, I printed images off the internet of the dolls, cut them using zig-zag scissors, wrapped a ribbon around the glass jar, then attached the cardstock cutouts with glue dots.

I also had a jar with clear bags and ties for the guests to fill their own goody bags to take some sweet treats home with them.

I love the Candy Topiary inspired again, by Pinterest:

Take a foam ball, stick Dum Dum lollipops into it (it took a whole large, 180-piece bag of Dum Dums), stand the foam ball up on either a candle stick or like I did, stick a dowel wrapped in ribbon into it, then stand it inside a flower pot.  The ball was really top-heavy therefore, I stuffed a bunch of heavy items I had around into the vase to help support the candy topiary (like a couple zip-lock bags filled with rice, a foam block that the dowel was stabbed into to help hold the topiary straight, and pretty much anything else I could find that was heavy and could fit inside the flower pot to keep the topiary from toppling over).

I added a jar filled with candies for the kids to guess the number of M&M's and included a cup with pens and paper next to it.  The winner got to take the jar home!  That's Crumbs Sugar Cookies' little sister, Sprinkle Spice Cookie, on the candy jar label.  She has a smudge of chocolate on her face, how cute!

I also baked some mini chocolate cupcakes topped with raspberry Italian meringue buttercream...yum!!!

One of my favorite treats to make for her party were these Lalaloopsy Cake Pop Favors!  I do have another blog post showing how they were made HERE:  Lalopoosy Cake & Cake Pops.

I designed the customized favor tags in Adobe Photoshop, trimmed them with zig-zag scissors, punched holes on each side of the card, and then slid the popsicle stick up through the tag. Adorable!

For the cakes design, I pulled some features off the doll's outfit - such as the stripes along the side of the cake matched her sleeves and the loops below the stripes matched the loop design on one of the layers of the skirt.  My daughter specifically asked for hearts along the cake so I did the top trim in hearts and they actually turned out really cute that way.  I was also inspired by JessiCakes design and used her technique with the stripes as shown here on her blog:  Maddie's Fashion Birthday Cake by JessiCakes.

For the Lolaloopsy cake topper, her head is a cake pop (just like I made for the cake pop favors) and the body is sculpted with gumpaste and Marshmallow Fondant (MMF).  I do have a page dedicated to MMF, how to make it as well as how to work with it.  Find it HERE:  Marshmallow Fondant (MMF) Recipes.

It was 4am by the time I finished assembling the cake so I left the polka dots off the cake toppers dress to sneak a couple hours of sleep.  I don't think anyone noticed.  Did you?

To see how the cake topper figurine and the Lalaloopsy Cake Pops were made, stop by my other blog post where I made a Blossom Flower Pots cake and cake pop favors found HERE:  Lalaloopsy Cake & Cake Pops

And finally, to the best part...getting to cut and eat the delicious cake.  No worries about the little one holding a cake knife; I was standing right beside her keeping a close eye on her.

The Lalaloopsy cake is covered and decorated in Marshmallow Fondant (MMF) and is an 8-inch round, 6 inches high.  It's a Momofuku Milk Bar Cake that I baked using a recipe found on Bon Appetit then filled with a raspberry Italian meringue buttercream....yum yum, so delicious!