My newest cake creation is a recreation of the cake Princess Tiana wears at the end of the movie.
I used the party supplies (plates, cups, etc) to help come up with my initial sketch. Here is what her dress looks like in the cartoon.
First, I baked enough 6″ and 8″ layers of Cook’s Illustrated Old Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake and the layered Quick and Easy Buttercream Frosting between each of three layers.
**I bought a Wilton Cake Leveler this week, hoping to have it help me evenly slice the tops off of my cakes, but it wouldn’t even budge through one! If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave them in comments**
Once the cakes were thoroughly cooled, I began shaping them. I cut off sections of the cake to give it a more hourglass feel. It is hard to see in the finished product, but I think it helped with all the fondant that was added, so the cake didn’t look too bulky.
Then I began making the bust of Tiana’s cake. I freehand cut leave shapes and applied them to the cake in the same manner of the dress she wears in the movie. I was happy to see the final outcome really resemble the dress, in both color and style.
Then came the daunting task of making the bottom tier look like the skirt of a dress, when all I had to go from was front view pictures of her dress. I decided to make my first attempt and pleating and laying the fondant to look like fabric, and almost haphazardly place different leave shaped pieces of green fondant around the tier. I am really happy with some of the side pieces I created that did end up looking like fabric.
Then it came time for the tiara. Luckily, I had leaf fondant cutters that helped to create the shapes for the upper part of the crown. I laid the leave along the edge of a bowl, and then cut a strip of darker fondant for the headband.
When the tiara had dried enough, I removed it from the bowl, only to realize the circumference was far too large for the top of my cake. I bent the headband, only to have it crack into many pieces. After some attempts at gluing it back together, I finally gave up and created a new headband, this time placing the leaves and band around the bottom of a glass.
Once all had dried, I painted on some water and then dipped the tiara into sanding sugar to give it it’s sparkle.
Finally, I created daisies, at the birthday girl’s request, to use as an accent for Tiana’s belt.
I knew the cake was a success when I delivered it and the birthday girl was speechless!!