And now for the story...at last

Good grief! Has it really been since June since I was on here?! I bet the suspense was killing you! :)

I didn't mean to leave you all hanging and wondering what that random thing was that I left a picture of last time. But Heidi is the winner, she answered the question of what it could be. Yay, Heidi! :D

Yes, the picture I showed you was indeed a staircase made out of sugar that Dad constructed to go on Malia's "Frozen" birthday cake. As you are all aware, there is this Disney movie that goes by the name of "Frozen" and it's kind of a big deal, umm, everywhere. 

Malia has especially been frostbitten by the craze and about a month or so before her actual birthday, she requested that Dad build her an epic cake in the theme of "Frozen".

Lucky for us, Dad is basically a genius and has created several awesome cakes throughout the years but it had been a while since we've had something quite like this.

For several weeks before Malia's birthday in June Dad employed the help of all of us (except Malia, who wasn't allowed to know anything about it once we got started) and we got into serious cake-building mode.       Dad planned everything out and did most of the actual creating so I guess you could consider Mom and I the "creative consultants/back-up helpers". Some days it turned into a cross between those tv shows

 "Hell's Kitchen" and "Cake Boss", but I'd say the result was most rewarding. 

I don't even want to think about how much sugar we went through in the process, and the many nights that Dad stayed up well past midnight are a little crazy.

Anyway, in the end we ended up making 2 1/2  yellow cakes which we turned into jello poke cakes, then 2 lemon poppy seed pound cakes, a boatload of frosting, and a few layers of fondant. We found a recipe for homemade lollipops and Dad used that for several different effects.

Obviously things are not totally up to scale, we just kind of mashed several different locations and scenes from the movie all into one place.

And if you'd rather just see how it all turned out rather than reading all the commentary, here we finally have some pictures!

This is an "aerial" shot during the assemblage of this beast.

This is more of an in-depth look over the frozen lake and into the snowy mountain castle. 

Another shot from the top of the finished cake.

We had Malia's birthday dinner after church and I think we had her pretty hyped up to see the cake that had been in the works for nearly a month! 

Dad brought up the cake from it's basement hide-out and then had Malia close her eyes until he could get it in front of her.

Surprise!!!

Time to check it out!

The sister missionaries were over for dinner and it was almost one of their birthday's too, so we kind of had a double party. :)

Except for the action figures, pretty much everything else on the cake was edible. We had the frozen lake made out of the lollipop mix, as well as the staircase and castle. The troll village was fondant, frosting, and chocolate rocks and the big daddy troll was marshmallow and frosting. Then we had rock candy sticks to look like the frozen trees.

This guy was just too heavy to put on the cake, plus the sugar cubes and frosting paste just kept falling apart so Dad just held him up to be seen during the big reveal. :)

Here's the cute troll man! I think he was one of my favorites!

The sad part was that all of us except for Malia got to see the cake so much that we almost never wanted to see it again! (Just kidding). She only got to see it for a few minutes before we cut into it.

 The great thing about Dad is that he never does anything half-way. The exhausting thing about Dad is that he never does anything half-way. :)

  A long time ago one of our cousins used the motto "Go Big or Go Home" to describe Dad. Yep, that about says it all! He just loves having projects to do and things to figure out and create, which has always been for us to see what he'll come up with next. 

  Whew, now I hope you can all rest easy and not have anymore sleepless nights as you think, "What ever could that picture be of?!" ;)