flip flops

There is something to be learned from every project. These flip flops were a challenge! They were made for a little girl named Riley who was celebrating her 8th birthday. Riley had seen a cake in the form of flips flops featured on the cover of a magazine and just knew she had to have this for her birthday party. When her mom contacted me to see if I could make this for her I said "yes, I can" without hesitation. We talked about the details and I developed a plan on how to accomplish this. It was to be a vanilla cake, but not a full size cake, with vanilla butter cream. Riley's mom wanted individual cakes, with polka dots, a little chocolate, a little sparkle. So I decided to make the polka dots out of milk chocolate and white chocolate which would be dyed pink and green. Oh, if only I knew...
I thought that if I warmed milk chocolate chips, they would melt enough so they would flatten into perfectly round discs. But, NO, they would not change their shape at all. Sooo, I thought, I know, I'll melt them all together and pipe the dots, didn't work! I ended up using chocolate candy melts that I piped into the dots, not very ideal either, but I made it work. Why, oh why, oh why did I not just use chocolate butter cream??? I thought of this when it was too late
The sandal straps: I initially planned on using rainbow licorice. Since the flip flops were only 2 1/2" long, I knew I would have to cut the licorice in half lengthwise and trim them. I played with this and played with this. I could not get the licorice to hold a shape and I was not going to put them on the cakes if they wouldn't stand up. Plan B; fondant dyed to match the white chocolate chips, which had been dyed to match the rainbow licorice (which I did not use). The fondant held up, although a few pieces broke and I freaked out a bit, but I got it to work. (big sigh of relief)
Theses little cakes ended up looking really awesome and Riley loved them, which was the most important thing!