There's never too much red around... with Elmo

There's a little pressure when you're doing characters that are as well-loved as... say Elmo.

Which is exactly I found myself doing.

You wanna make sure you do justice to such characters, because their fans - 8 or 80 years old - WILL let you know when you're doing a crappy job.

Gotta tread carefully....

For 2 year-old Zander's birthday party, the request was for Elmo cake pops to share with his little friends.

Yay, this was going to be such fun!
More on birthday pops: Hole-in-One, Monkeys, Ponies, Doggies

First, and most importantly - his eyes. The trademark Elmo eyes are white and round, they had to be just the right size in proportion to the rest of his head. That's probably one of the trickest parts of making any cake pops - getting the sizes of all the parts right. or they'll just look like looney bins.

L: Orange/red little candy bullets for nose, you can substitute them with orange tic tacs
R: Perfect mini white Jawbreakers for eyes from Candilicious

This was just the occasion to break open my new jet black fondant pack, to create his mouth. I preferred not making these too much in advance, didn't want them too stiff and dried out so they would fit better into his fur.

Cut with 1.5cm round circle cutter, and cut them further
into 2 halves - there, you now had 2 Elmo mouths.

Special effects out of the way - on to Elmo himself.

After dipping each strawberry cake ball into red Wilton candy melt (apparently available only at Bake-It Yourself), create his trademark fur-running-amok with a toothpick, raking and lifting through the coating immediately after.

By the 10th Elmo, you begin to get a slight cramp from gripping the toothpick in continuous raking motions.

And by the 20th - you're asking yourself "what on earth am I doing??"

When you reach that point, this is what you have to do: Put toothpick down, unlock fingers, look at army of Elmos you've created.

High on hats!

It'll be worth it. You'd smile. Guaranteed.

The process was tedious, but it made the design forgiving at the same time - the ruffled fur helped conceal coating imperfections.

To add a special touch (this was an order from a very good friend!), I created a special 'Zander' name plate for the birthday boy, made out of fondant. It was a little laborious, but just like all the other little cake pop effects - added a zing to the Elmo army, and was all worth it.

Petite Pops goes to the zoo ... Canines go upscale!

So dogs don't exactly belong in a zoo, but you get the idea...

After chicken rice, 4D, bubble tea and soccer - dogs are probably next on the list of Singaporeans' favourite things.

This was done for a birthday celebration - 59 glorious years of life and living!

The birthday mommy loved dogs, and we decided we just had to make her some doggie pops.

I'm not sure what breed my doggie pops fall under (did I just create a new breed??) ... so let's call them Floppy Ears.

Floppy ears!
Shaped with teardrop cutters.

Read about Petite Pops' other zoo escapades ... Ponies and Monkeys.

Since they were going to be a delicious chocolately brown base, I made Floppy Ears out of a spongy chocolate cake. The tan coating went perfectly with the cocoa-coloured cake inside, never too much chocolate!

Check out other chocolate pops at the golf course)

On went the tiny chocolate button noses. And then the marshmellow collars, the floopy ears. After I piped their little eyes and doggie noses, they were complete.

Almost.

I decided to accessorize.

Gave one a little multi-layered hat, another couple had 2 green pigtail hair-ties.

Green's quite a good look for Floppy Ears?

A few more had their purple starburst hats tilted at an angle.

Not quite Kate Middleton :)

Special surprise touch...  chocolate chip  birthday cupcakes!

Done.

One day, I'll attempt to make pops that look like my dogs.

Hole in one, anybody?

I'm not much of a golfer. I've been to the range, hit a few balls, but that's about it. The growing corns on my palms were a pain, I wasn't a fan of squinting after a speck into the far horizon. Handicaps still made me think of  hobbling on crutches, getting torched by the midday sun made me see double.

Don't think golf's my calling.

That didn't stop me from getting all excited about last week's golf-themed birthday though.

It was a trilogy April birthday celebration - 2 golfer boys + 1 non-golfer girl.

The order was for 50 cake pops, and I got ambitious as I planned and started drafting the designs.

The plain cake cardboard base morphed into an actual cake-layer golf course. Chocolate cake spiked with raisins, covered with pale green fondant. Mmmm...

Read more about Bakerella's fondant creations here.

Don't try tinting white fondant green from scratch,
the trouble's not worth it. Get Green colored fondant,
there's plenty else for you to do

A darker green path across the course to add definition, and a little 18th hole flag at the corner. Let's hope someone makes it to the flag.

Much as golf isn't the easiest game around, the golf-theme was great for cake pop creations.

In went some lemon-vanilla golf balls, indented with a dogbone tool.
Some green trees around for effect.

You need the bigger dogbone tool to
create the right-sized holes for the golf balls

 What else, hmmm...  Of course: golf bags.

These needed detailed fondant work. Cut white rectangular and rounded corner strips to form the bag trimmings, made some holes with a pointed cornice tool. Bag pockets for the front, and orange bag handles molded.

Then came the tricky part: the golf clubs to stick out of the bag. These were tiny and after I tinted the fondant gray - the first few I sculpted kept breaking off. It took a number of tries to get the club shapes and proportions workable but I finally got it.

Keep the fondant add-ons light
so they don't fall off or drag the pops down

I added the birthday names to tshirt-shaped pops scattered all across the green.

Almost there.

Except the birthday girl - who didn't golf!
So I added a 'refreshments' stand for her.

All things pretty and nice!

Decked it out with chocolate covered chocolate pops, each with something sweet that she likes.
Cupcakes, sweets, gifts, ice-cream cones, tiny cups of cuppucinos (her fave!).

All done. Phew.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

ps. If you're looking for sumthin' special for Mother's Day (May 13), come this way...