How to: Black and white Mickey Mouse/Disney cake pops

My mom ordered cake pops but gave me the choice of how they would look. Those are nice orders because I can try out ideas I have without spending too much money on it. Of course I did not charge her for the fact that they weren't all the same and much more work than your standard cake pop, so it's a good deal for both of us (in my opinion anyway). 

I wanted to make black and white Fab 4 cake pops (sorry to me that will never be the Beatles..) with a color accent. Unfortunately I didn't have green or blue fondant in the house so I kept those black and white. I actually like them this way too. I think Donald Duck is very recognizable, Goofy could use a green hat and maybe some ears though.

Mickey would probably have turned out better if his buttons had been red. Wouter didn't recognize him at all, even with Minnie right next to it... Minnie turned out great in my opinion. The heart shaped confetti worked great as a bow. 

I also made these pops with the intention of adding as little sugar as I possibly could. I therefore tried to stay away from buttercream and Candy melts, instead using a sugarfree cake recipe, ganache and chocolate.

It was a good try with fairly satisfactory results!

For those of you who are interested in a more thorough description of what I did, I added a how to here. Otherwise you can stop reading and maybe pin my picture for me :)

HOW TO:

(also check out the Mickey Mouse no-bake cake pop post)

The filling consists of Honey Ginger Cake. I found the recipe on Homemade Baby Food Recipes.com where they also have a lot of other great sugarfree cake recipes.

I had some white chocolate ganache which I had taken out of the freezer the day before. After I crumbled the cake to pieces, I used this to stick it back together. The cake is quite moist on its own and I found that I probably could have rolled satisfactory balls without adding the ganache. Anyhoo... I rolled the mixture into balls which were way too big and then coated them with a bit of wholewheat flour just so they wouldn't be so sticky. I put them into a egg tray with plastic wrap over it and used yellow Wilton Candy melt to stick a lolly pop stick into them. (I used Candy melt because you cannot temper that small amount of chocolate.) I put the tray into the freezer for at least 15 minutes so the pops would be hard and easy to work with (hmmm sounds weird, hard and easy... you get what I mean right?)

While the pops were in the freezer I made the Mouse ears. I used chocolate drops and an apple corer. This made a nice round piece of chocolate that wasn't too thin. I also tempered white chocolate (don't know how? Check here).

I coated all the pops in white chocolate first. A quarter of the pops I put on a piece of baking paper, those were going to be the Goofy's and half I added ears to. Because the pops came from the freezer the ears needed to go on quickly, because the chocolate sets really fast. It's good though because you don't risk the ears falling off before it's set.

I wanted to use the gold balls as in the picture above for Mickey buttons. I had it all set up but then completely forgot to stick them on after dipping. When I remembered the chocolate had long since set. It beats having to draw them on though, so I would definitely do this next time.

After all the pops were dipped in white chocolate I put them in a pop holder thing and put them back in the freezer. Meanwhile I tempered dark chocolate.

Mickey, Minnie and Donald have their top half in dark chocolate and Goofy the bottom, though because his stick is on top what you're doing is the same.

Minnie got two heart shaped confetti candies on top her head and I made the spots on here dress with a lollypop stick dipped in chocolate. That's also how I made the lines on Goofy, though I think I'll use a brush for that next time.

Mickey's buttons are made from yellow Wilton Candy Melt, but as I said before I'll use the gold balls next time.

Goofy's hat and Donald's hat and bow are made from white fondant.

Make it beautiful!

Mickey Mouse (Christmas) cookies

I made some really cute looking Mickey Mouse cookies the other day. Mostly because I have to do something while sitting out the last weeks (days??) of my pregnancy, but also because they are fun and yummy!

Check out the recipe here, it's from Disney.

It does look like they might have coated the bottom of their cookies in chocolate. I considered doing that if the ears weren't sticking but they turned out great so I left them plain.







I also made an English Sticky Toffee Pudding out of a Disney World cookbook:

 

It's made with dates and put in the oven where it creates a nice chewy top with a pudding like center. Over the top came the toffee, which I totally screwed up by letting it overheat. It became really hard candy so we scooped it off. And adding custard, made from scratch which is ten times more yummy and just as easy as custard made from powder.

It looks a little unappetizing in this picture but I can assure you it's not!

How to make Easy No-bake Mickey Mouse cake pops

I really liked the No-bake cupcake tutorial and I had been trying to figure out how to make easy Mickey Mouse Pops so here's the combo!

Easy No-bake Mickey Mouse Pops
(Also check out my other Mickey Mouse/Disney Cake Pops How to. It has some other ideas for making and sticking on the ears. And has the stick the other way.)

I made the ingredients list so you know how much you need for the amount of pops you want to make, instead of making you make a certain amount of pops or having to due complicated mathematical things to figure out how much you really need.

Materials:
- Pack of Oreo cookies (2 oreos per pop)
- Cream cheese (1/4 tablespoon per pop)
- Dark chocolate, enough to be able to dip all of them. I'd use about 500 grams for a dozen I think.
- Red sprinkles
- Mini marshmallows (or large ones if you live in a country that charges about 50 cents per mini marshmallow like me)
- royal icing (or tiny white drops)
- Lollipop sticks


Preparation

 









Take your oreos and make them into crumbs. You can do that with a food processor or if you don't have one put the cookies into a plastic ziploc bag. Push the air out and zip the bag closed. Take a rolling pin and roll over the bag until the cookies are crumbs.
Now mix the cookie crumbs with the cream cheese until you get a dough like substance. Put this in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

Now if you have mini marshmallows you can skip this part, otherwise:

Take a few big marshmallows and something to make small circles. I used an apple core remover thing (sorry don't know the correct term for that) Push out little circles.

Making the pops

Take your cookie dough out of the fridge and roll it into balls about the diameter of a big marshmallow or walnut. Put these on wax paper on a plate and put them back into the fridge.
Now take a really small bit of chocolate and heat it in the microwave for 30 seconds on half power (400 watt on mine). Stir, heat for 15 seconds and repeat until it looks like the picture below. Don't over heat it or it will burn and be useless to you. Now just keep stirring and the pieces will melt. If not microwave another 10 seconds and stir again. This should temper the chocolate so it hardens when it cools.

Lay out your lollipop sticks, the mini marshmallows and the chocolate. Take your cookies back out of the fridge.

Dip a stick in the chocolate and push it into the cookie. If the ball becomes a little less round it's ok. If it is too much just reshape it with your hands.

Now take your mini marshmallows, these are the ears of course. Dip the marshmallow partly in the chocolate and paste one on both sides of the stick. Once again put the cookies in the fridge for 15 minutes.

While waiting on those cookies to cool, make the royal icing and temper the rest of your dark chocolate. This is not just melting so use my How to temper chocolate.
You need enough chocolate so that you can dip all your cookies in the chocolate all the way. Take the smallest deepest container you can find that will still fit your pop including ears. That way it will take the least amount of chocolate.
Set out the chocolate, red sprinkles and royal icing.

Take out your pops, dip them in the chocolate taking care to coat the ears but try not to coat the stick. Try also to do just one dip because otherwise the chocolate layer is too thick and there will be the possibility that the ears fall off. Let the excess chocolate drip off and then dip the pop half way into the red sprinkles. Put the pop back on the wax paper and into the fridge. Do the rest of your pops and put each back into the fridge as you make them. When they are all in leave them for another 15 minutes.

The chocolate I had left after dipping, I used to make little chocolate bonbons. Just pour it into a mold or spread it on some wax paper. Sprinkle the rest of your red sprinkles on there and you have some nice leftover treats. Pop in the fridge until set.

After the chocolate on the cookie pops has hardened take them out of the fridge and pipe little round circles on both sides of the "pants". If they stand out too much, use a moist finger (water not spit please) to lightly push it down.

Tada! I wanted to decorate the stick a little too but I couldn't decide how. So I just left it like this. Could have done with a white background too... hmm.
You could also make these pops into Minnie Mouse by adding more white circles on the "skirt" and making a tiny bow out of red fondant for on top, or make it in pink.
They would also be pretty impressive if you stuck the stick in the bottom instead of the top. Then you can push them in some styrofoam or a cup of sugar and you'll have a real eye catcher at your party!

My hubby and I tried them and they tasted yummy!!! Super snacks for kids birthdays or pretty party treats for goofy (well, Mickey really) grown ups.

Happy Popping!

DIY Mickey Mouse 2D plushie including free pattern

Have you ever looked at a Pook-a-looz and thought: "Geez those are big!" as well as "That looks easy enough to make" ? Well you won't have to google it because I'll show you how.

Here's the original by Disney which I secretly would have loved to buy if they had sold them outside of the USA, which they do not...



And here's my version:



I put him next to a Wii remote just to show the size. He's quite tiny, but very cute. He did turn out a little less wide than I would have liked, meaning he's kinda skinny :) I changed this in the pattern, as well as making his legs a little shorter.

I have never actually held a real Pook in my hands because, like I said, they do not sell them anywhere except the USA, not even Canada where I had the fortune of being three months of this year. But looking at the Disneystore.com page I found that they are made from stylized soft fleece, whatever that means. I decided to make mine from felt, because it's cheap, easy to work with and you don't have to buy it meters/yards at a time. The felt works well I think, but if you want to make this for a baby or small child I would recommend fleece as it's softer.

I sewed the entire thing by hand, which took a surprisingly short time. All in all I spent about 4 hours on Mickey, while watching television.

Making your Mickey

Needed:
- The pattern which you can print out below
- sheets of real woolfelt or pieces cuddle fleece, in colors: black, red, yellow, white
- needle and black thread (you will be hand sewing this)
- pins
- a printer


First you want to download and print the pattern:  2D Mickey Plushie pattern  It's free, so feel free to spread it around but I would appreciate it if you mentioned my blog.

The pattern is pretty easy. You can cut out all the pieces on the black lines and transfer them straight to the pieces of felt, I already took seams into account. The green lines are just to show where the different pieces go so do not cut on these!

UPDATE: It is easier to cut out a full black body and sew the pants onto it. To do this: cut out the pants first (keep all the seams because they will need to be a little bigger to cover the body), then just paste the parts of the pattern together overlapping the GREEN lines and cut out a full body piece.

You will also need felt, one sheet of each color. I bought  these at Michaels but you can get them at any store that sells craft stuff, like walmart. You will need the colors black, white, yellow and red.You might want to buy two pieces of black, just in case you mess up.

Update: I just learned from mmmcrafts (see links) that for plushies it's better to use real wool felt, not this synthetic stuff. When hugging the plush a lot it will shed and get pieces of fluff on it. Mmmcrafts can tell you where to buy these (see FAQ). You can also use cuddle fleece.

In the picture there's also pink because I'm planning on making a Minnie Mouse too, which I'll post when I have it.

Other needed supplies: Pins, a thin needle, a bit of plushie filling and sturdy black thread. I used thread for jeans because it's thicker and makes for a nice decorative seam.

So go ahead and cut out all your pieces. You will also need to cut a tail but I'll show you that later.

I assembled the pieces on another piece of felt. This way you don't lose anything and you know where everything goes.

Now take your needle and start sewing one side of Mickey (meaning either all the front or all the back pieces) together by whip stitch. (If you have no idea how to do this, here is a great tutorial.)  When joining these parts together I stitched back and forth as shown below to create a sturdier seam. You do not necessarily have to do this. After stitching together one half of Mickey, do the same with the other half. Leave the face, tail and buttons for later. Right now you should have two halves of Mickey that are mirror images of each other (though they'll look about the same).

Position the face, eyes and nose on one half of Mickey. When you are satisfied with the look, pin the nose and eyes on the face. Then stitch them on the face. I chose to do a decorative stitch because I think it looks cute but you can sew them on with a different stitch if you like. Beware though that if you used black thread for all the seams, you will see this after you turned mickey right side out and you'll have a decorative stitch along all the seams.

When you stitched on the nose and eyes, stitch the entire face on the head (beware you stitch it on the right side! You don't want to turn Mickey later, to find that the face is now on the inside of your plushie.)

Sew the buttons on the pants in the same way and on the same half of Mickey that also has a face.

Now you'll need to make a tail. This is really easy. Just cut out a long stumped triangle and sew it on the pants of the other half of Mickey. For a tail example see the picture below. I didn't put this in the pattern because you might want to make the tail smaller or bigger or wider or thinner, whatever meets your fancy. You can also stitch it on differently, pointing down or up, or diagonal. I kind of liked being able to see a piece of the tail from the front.



So now your Mickey is almost done except that he's laying in two pieces. Whip stitch these right side together with just one row of stitching (so do not go back and forth here) but leave one side of the pants open for turning.

Carefully turn Mickey right side out, taking care to shape his hands, shoes and especially his ears. The one row of stitching should be visible making it a nice decorative stitching. I think it looks really cute when it's not perfect stitching but again, that's up to you.

The only thing left to do now is fill Mickey with some fluff. Be careful not to fill him too much, because then he won't be 2D anymore. You'll want to keep him kind of flat. When you are satisfied close the pants seam with whip stitch. When you're done you can use a pin to push the felt under the stitches towards the inside so it will look the same as the other seams.



All done! Yay!

Did you make a Mickey? How did you do? I would love to hear about it!

Update: My niece really loved this Mickey. She carried it around Disney World for an entire day (until her mommy bought her a minnie mouse plush...:) )