LOL Surprise Sugar Sheet Drip Cake with Meringue Cookies

This cake is for my daughter's seventh birthday. I really wanted it to be something special because we were unable to have a party for her due to COVID-19. She had a few very specific ideas on what she wanted. She wanted an LOL Surprise! Themed cake. She also wanted it to be surrounded in a purple sugar sheet with some gold on it and with a blue white chocolate drip.

She initially wanted me to model three LOL Surprise! figures, but we unfortunately ran out of time. In the end, she had to be satisfied with one. So, I did my best to model Queen Bee.

I started out with some light brown fondant that I added more brown food coloring to as well as a touch of black to darken it.

Much better.

Then I added some tylo powder to the brown fondant to stiffen it since I knew I would be modeling figures with it.

Then I took a small piece of the fondant and added even more brown to it to make it just a bit darker. I noticed that Queen Bee's face was a shade darker than her body.

Perfect.

Then I took the darker brown fondant and rolled it into a ball to be her head. I compared the size to an LOL Surprise! doll my daughter had laying around. I used this doll as a size reference to get the proportions right.

I started out using a ball tool to create the eye sockets. LOL Surprise! dolls have extremely large eyes that are very low down in their faces. Don't leave too much cheek left over and don't skimp on the size of the eyes.

Then I pressed a ball of white to fit into the eye sockets and used a sharp tool to make the mouth opening. Queen Bee's mouth is always open in an O shape because she's a spitter. You can fill her head with water and squeeze it back out her mouth. Can you tell my daughter love's LOL Surprise! dolls?

Next, I compared various round piping tips to the size of the eye color and pupil of the doll and used the ones that were about the right size to cut out the color of the doll's eyes, brown, and the black pupils.

I cut out the size of the pupils with the smaller piping tip and added the pupils into it and glued them onto the whites of the eyes with edible glue. Quick tip: all LOL Surprise! dolls are constantly looking up. I think it adds to the innocence and cuteness factor, but you can always orient the pupils toward the top of the eye.

Next, I rolled out some thin snakes of black fondant and glued them along the top of the eyes.

I added a few tiny balls of black onto the sides of the eyes for more eyelashes as well as short snakes above the eye for eyebrows. Then I added a tiny dot of brown for the nose and tiny snakes around the mouth for lips. I also added a tiny ball of brown cut in half onto the sides of the head for ears.

I thought the head was looking good so far. I balanced it on a squashed ball of brown fondant for the neck.

Time to move on to the body. I make the body about the right size for an LOL Surprise! doll sitting down. Normally LOL Surprise! dolls have smaller waists than this, but for the sake of stability, I left hers just a bit chunky and sculpted Queen Bee's black dress out of black fondant. I knew I would want her splayed legs to be peaking out from under her dress later, so I made a couple of little gaps at the bottom.

I also made the hole at the top relatively large so the neck of the head would fit into it.

I also made some holes in the side that the arms will fit into.

Then I painted some edible glue onto the dress in stripes and carefully sprinkles some gold sanding sugar onto it to make the gold glitter stripes on Queen Bee's dress. I found this gold sanding sugar at a dollar store equivalent. Lucky find.

I made stripes all around the dress and pressed the head onto it. Since the actual doll doesn't want to sit up, it doesn't look like it, but the model was only barely taller than her. Pretty true to life size.

Then I rolled some thicker snakes of brown fondant, squashed one end flatter to be hands, cut out the thumb, but instead of making the individual fingers, I found it better to just press in some lines to indicate where the fingers are. LOL Surprise! dolls don't actually usually have separate fingers.

I added the arms onto the body as well as short little stumps for legs.

And a few black shoe shapes for her feet. It's hard to see, but I pressed some detail into the shoes with the back of a knife. A tiny heel and line around the top of the boot.

Then I rolled out some yellow fondant fairly thick and cut one edge to be straight...ish. Queen bee has straight bangs, but then the hair comes down on both sides. That what I was trying to achieve.

I carefully laid the hair onto the head, adding a bit of height to the head. Then I added a couple of balls of yellow onto the back of the head to be her buns.

I used a blunt sculpting tool to create some bumpy texture in her hair. Then I painted it all over with edible glue.

And had a great time making a mess covering it with gold sanding sugar. But I was really happy with the overall result. I removed some of the excess sanding sugar with a dry paintbrush afterwards.

I also wanted to make the LOL Surprise! logo for the side of the cake. I rolled out some pink fondant fairly thick. I wanted this to be the back.

I actually started out using a fondant press form to make the letters for the word Surprise! at the bottom of the logo. Once I had that placed, I estimated the size and freehand cut out the larger letters for LOL.

I used circle cutters to make the O. I placed them onto the pink above the word Surprise.

I also added dots after each of the letters LOL and an exclamation point after Surprise!

Then I extruded a bit of black fondant and surrounded the LOL with it as well as the dots.

Then I added a few dots with tiny balls of squashed black fondant. In retrospect I probably should have painted these on.

And I cut the pink fondant background to match the size and angle of the logo. I set this aside to set up for a few days.

So far, everything that we've done has been preparation. Finally, the day to make the cake arrived. There was still a couple important steps that had to be done before we are at cake, but we'll get there.

First off, I made the sugar sheet. Remember Sabrina specifically said that she wanted a purple sugar sheet with a bit of gold. So first, I had to color my sugar purple. I colored it with some purple and pink gel food coloring added to a bowl full of sugar. Just stir it with a spoon. There are a few flecks, but most of the color is mixed through.

Then I added my glucose and mixed it in with my hands.

The texture should get to the consistency of wet sand.

Then I dumped it onto a lined baking try and rolled it out.

Then I sprinkled some gold sanding sugar onto the top and pressed it into the sugar sheet with a piece of baking paper on top. I thought it caught exactly the vibe of purple with some gold on it.

While that's setting up, I made some meringue cookies. I wanted to make Swiss meringue buttercream anyway, so I started that process and stopped before adding the butter. I took some of the meringue and put them in two bowls, one colored purple, the other blue. Those are my daughter's favorite colors.

I put both meringues into piping bags with star tips and just started piping some rosettes and drops. Various sizes and I added some lollipop sticks to some of them. Then I placed them into a barely on oven for an hour and switched off the oven and allowed them to cool in the oven until they were set up.

Now we're at cake! This is funfetti cake (on request) and Swiss meringue buttercream. I had three layers of six-inch cake.

I crumb coated the cake in the buttercream.

And frosted it again.

Now, the sugar sheet was, unfortunately, not allowed to set up as long as it should have. Ordinarily with a sugar sheet you need to let it set for around 5 hours before using it. I didn't have that much time. I had to get it on the cake before that. I knew it wasn't completely set up, so I tried to pull a trick to get it to work for me anyway. I cut a straight line around the bottom and picked it up on the parchment paper and wrapped the whole thing around the cake.

As you can see, it didn't go quite according to plan. I was able to pull the parchment paper out from behind the sugar sheet, but the sugar itself did not hold together. Lesson learned: leaving it to set too long is better than trying to use a sugar sheet not set long enough. Learn from my mistakes. I should have made it the night before and allowed it to set overnight, knowing that I wouldn't have tons of time the day of.

Now, if this does happen to you, sugar sheets are very sticky and sand-like. Remember that wet sand consistency? Well, it repairs about as well as wet sand. You can stick it back together. Just press it back onto the cake. It's not nearly as pretty as an intact sugar sheet, but at least it's reasonably presentable.

And I did have one good side.

Now, my daughter wanted a sugar sheet drip cake. I was really nervous about the drip at first, because I wasn't sure if it wouldn't melt the sugar sheet. So, instead of ganache, I just melted some blue candy melts and used them without thinning them down with cream. Candy melts set up very quickly, so the drip wasn't as picturesque as it could have been, but I smoothed it with a spatula and declared it good enough.

Then front even looked pretty good.

Then I placed Queen Bee onto the cake.

I filled in the top with more pieces of sugar sheet.

The worst spots of sugar sheet I covered with the LOL Surprise! logo.

And pressed in some meringue pops behind the figure.

And filled in all around the cake with more meringue cookies.

I think this cake worked on some level. It was a huge challenge for me especially since we were moving in the middle of working on it, so I didn't have all the equipment I would normally have all in one place. But the most important thing? My daughter loved it. She said it was just what she wanted. That makes everything worth it.

I do also feel that I want to tackle the sugar sheet drip cake again sometime. I think it would work without too many problems if done properly. The drip had no effect on the sugar sheet, so I would love to try it again. Just maybe without the figure.