A Princess In The Making

So I just delivered my Princess Tiana cake today and the client seemed to really like it. I absolutely loved working on this cake design and I enjoyed trying out some new decorating techniques.

I started this cake project by adding my lace accent to the underneath of the cake board. I tried gluing it to the top of the cake board to help hide the rough finished edges, but with the baord being finished with a wax coating, the hot glue would not attach to the top of the board.

As for the cake, I started by icing the cake layers with buttercream icing (yellow on the first layer and cream on the top layer). Then, I cut a pattern from posterboard for the white feather-looking pieces of the underneath of her dress. I used the pattern to cut out fondant accents. Then I made a larger feather-like pattern for the green layer of her dress - also made from fondant. I then dusted the green fondant pieces with a pearl luster dust to give it a little glittery effect.

I finished up the detail of the dress with a green rope of fondant at the base of the 6" round. I cut out freehand three leaves and cut some veins into the leaves for detail and attached them to the rope detail. I used gumpaste for the flower accents and cut them out with my cookie cutters. I let them dry in a curved drying rack and then attached them to the rope effect with a dot of buttercream icing. I finished off the flower detail with a bit of buttercream icing in the center of the flower and added green pearl sugar dragees.

As for the tiara itself, I made it from gray-colored fondant. In the future, I would make it from gumpaste so that it dries faster and a bit harder. I painted it with silver luster dust. Then I used thinned piping gel to paint the tips of the tiara and then shook clear sugar crystals on top of it to create the glassy-look. It took it a bit of time to dry. I secured the crown in the top layer of the cake with toothpicks from the base of the tiara.

All in all, I think this cake turned out beautiful and I hope to have the opportunity to work on another cake design real soon that challenges my technique the way this one did. Thanks for the order, Amelia!