Moana Birthday Party Guide: Stunning Cake Ideas, Food, and Island Decor
The Ultimate Moana Birthday Party Guide!
When my daughter turned 12, she asked for a Moana-themed birthday party — and I happily sailed right into party-planning mode. From handmade island decor to custom cakes featuring Moana herself and the hilarious Kakamora, this party was pure tropical magic. Here’s everything I created, how I did it, and some tips to make your own Moana celebration unforgettable. FYI – I threw this together in a week! You can too!
Section 1: The Cakes – Moana Princess Doll Cake & Kakamora Cake
For the last 8 birthdays I have been making doll cakes for my daughter. It all started with Rapunzel and it was and endless love for doll cakes after that! Even when I am short on time (like 2 hours) I can whip together a doll cakes that is pretty amazing and loved by all.
Doll Cake are always a good idea!
In a pinch, use a cake mix and bake it “bakery style” using an extra egg and adding some vanilla. Or make it extra healthy and use applesauce instead of butter or oil!
My go to tools for a foolproof princess doll cake: (all from Amazon) Just click the links.
- Wilton doll cake pan
- 10” round cake pan
- Round Cardboard cake board
- Round cake turntable for decorating
- Wilton Fondant (as I used in this case, but I have done an all buttercream cake- see the Rapunzel cake!)
- Coconut Cake mix (I used this Dolly Parton Coconut cake and it was amazing)
- Baker’s joy cooking spray (optional)
- Fondant molds (flowers, leaves) (optional)
- Fondant tools (rolling pin, cutter, flower/leaves mold) – optional but I used for this cake
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Let’s get baking! Bake the cake, cool in the fridge for an hour minimum or wrap in plastic wrap and tinfoil and chill overnight for a bake ahead time saving tip!
TIP: For a Gourmet Touch, add in crushed MIlano white chocolate lemon cookies (or any flavor to match your cake)! NOTE: there was NO CAKE LEFT! This was a HUGE HIT!
TIP: cut the “Doll” hole a bit wider (Moana has hips, so we need room for her to slide into the cake without cracking it open - been there, suffered that!
Add a crumb coat of icing over the doll cake, it also helps to attach the fondant, like glue!
I was in a pinch for time, so I rolled out plain white fondant, used a textured square to create a “linen” look and started creating “fabric” dress pieces
You can see the texture better in this photo. I added a red sash to cover the top of the cake “hole” and some smaller rose flowers started to make the base come to life!
I added more colors of flowers to create more dimension and added monstera leaves to create even more realism and finish it all off!
In the decor section below I’ll show you how I made the Tafiti hand that holds the cake. Inspired by the end of the first movie when Tafiti lifts Moana up in her hand.
Next up: The Kakamora Cake - an adventure like no other!
When my daughter begged me to not only build the Moana doll cake, but also build her a Kakamora Ship cake, I thought sure, how hard could it be. After doing a lot of research and finding NO ONE had done this…it wasn’t long before I realized why! IT WAS CRAZY! I had no real clue how I was going to go about making this happen and I surely didn’t have enough cake making experience to have confidence in building it, but as everything in my life goes, I was up for the challenge!
The first step was baking enough cakes to build multiple layers tall enough to pull off the 3 separate ships that “come together” and look like a giant island covered with Kakamora’s!
When my daughter saw the Kakamora cake like this, she said, “Mom, it looks terrible!” LOL But I said, it is just getting started, have faith! (I was nervous as well, but I knew somehow I’d make it come together…SOMEHOW!)
My daughter made all the cake pops! Some coconut flavored cake and some were funfetti, because it was her birthday cake choice after all!
I knew the Kakamora would have to be cake pops, that was already decided. I figured I’d have to have the ships covered with as many cake pops as I could to give it that realistic Kakamora feeling – since there are like thousands of them everywhere in the movie! That’s a lot of cake pops Tony! The mission was on, it was cake pop time!
Since it was 10PM the night before the party and I was moving like the Flash prepping a party, and my daughter was tapped out on helping, I didn’t get any pictures of the cake pops being dipped in melting chocolate, sorry, but you can imagine, it was not easy to do and take photos. The chocolate hardens fast and you have to work fast with it!
After I had dipped the cake pops in chocolate, it wasn’t until putting many on the cakes to see how they looked until I realized they needed more. They needed coconut texture and they needed faces! I swear I didn’t think I’d make it in time to make faces or even make this cake presentable in any way…but again, challenge accepted!
The ships are supposed to look like an island, so there had to be trees…and honestly the leaves and trees started to make it look much better! But as you can see, the plain dipped chocolate cake pop Kakamora’s needed much more to come to life!
Sleepy and tired, and with limited space I did my best, but it worked! LOL
Island-Inspired Decor - making the magic come to life
I used a combination of some Dollar Tree tablecloths, some stuff from Amazon, and fresh fruits like pineapples, watermelon, coconuts, and apples to make the tables look like an Island paradise!
My vision was all about Tafiti holding Moana in her hand (like at the end of the first movie), while the original vision didn’t quite happen, the way it turned out was still pretty awesome!
To make Tahiti’s hand, I used a large Amazon shipping package and cutout a huge hand shape. I covered it in green tissue paper with mod podge and cut a slit in it for the cake stand to slide into. After that I covered the hand with this stretchy moss I got from Amazon and it worked really well.
I hope you enjoyed this Moana Birthday Party Guide - make it happen in a week or less!
If you love doll cakes as much as we do, check out my other doll cakes! I have made Rapunzel, Ariel, Cinderella, Jasmine (and flying carpet), Mirabel (Encanto), Hermione (Harry Potter and HoneyDuke’s), & Elsa (Frozen).
Save & share!
Until next time…
Keep smiling, improve every day, and build a life you love!
Yours Truly,
January Ember
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