Princely Baby Shower Cake and Disney Princesses!

Hello there! As promised, I'd like to share a cake that I think leveled me up in Caking XP. It was definitely a challenge, but it was fun to make. I had to dust off my gumpaste skills. I don't work with it often at work, so it took some getting used to again.

I started with the booties and crown. I made those out of gumpaste quite a few days in advance. I didn't have a baby booties cutter, so I printed out a template and made it work.

Beginning stages: sole attached to front flap

Back flap added and left to dry

As far as the crown went, I hand-drew my own template and used that to cut the gumpaste out.

I thought I had photos of the next step, but I don't. Sorry! I wrapped a can of dried oats with wax paper, then wrapped the gumpaste crown around it. I added another layer of wax paper on top of that to retain the round shape (and to keep the fleur-de-lis shaped bits from flopping forward). I waited a day, then added the little embellishments onto the front of the crown.


After they were fully dried, I made a mixture of vodka and gold dust **make sure this is quality gold dust. Wilton dust did not cut it for me** The dust I used was from CK Products, and it came in a small 2 gram container.

 While everything was drying, I covered the board in fondant (clear piping gel works great) and hot glued the sparkly ribbon onto the edges.

As far as getting the quilting pattern onto the cake, I ended cup covering the cakes in fondant then trying to press the impression mats onto the surface. It worked...ish. I ended up going over the grooves with the back of a knife. The next time I do a fondant cake (which is this weekend, actually), I'll see how it works if I press the pattern in first and then cover.

I used more hand-drawn and cut out templates for the plaques that went onto the front of the cake. I used gumpaste for the letters (make sure you have a SHARP Xacto knife to clean up your letters) and painted that as well. Here is the finished product at the party with the decorations. Lovely!

I also had a Disney princess themed cake for an adorable 5-year-old that gave me her specific cake parameters: 2 Ariels, a Mulan, a Tiana, a Pocahontas, and a Tinker Bell; all with crowns except Tinker Bell.  And of course, I had to oblige!

 
The hardest part, honestly, was mixing all of the colors. Thank goodness for parchment pouches!

I have quite a few cakes this weekend. I am currently between my mother's birthday which was this past Sunday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOMMY!)  and my brother's birthday, which is tomorrow. Eek! Cake chaos, but I love it!