Lesson 14: Character Cake - The Little Mermaid (Disney Princess Ariel)

Ok, I've made a few cakes during my cake decorating classes but this is by far my favourite cake!  It's not the most complicated or technical in execution but it's the prettiest!   The Little Mermaid is my favourite Disney cartoon and Ariel is my favourite Disney Princess back in the days when they didn't market the Disney Princess as a separate product.  

The cake was made with the Disney Princess Ariel Wilton cake pan and then decorated with buttercream.  The sides were iced with the Cake Icer Basketweave tip #789.  Then we outlined the face with black coloured buttercream and we filled in the banks with the Open Star tip #16.  The challenge was drawing the outline, filling the face in is time consuming and tiring but not too difficult.  Decorating the sides of the cake was equally as fun.  Creating the waves, starfish, fish and octopus just completed the mood for the cake.

  This cake just makes me happy looking at it. 

Lesson 13: Royal Icing Flowers

This lesson we learned to make flowers with royal icing.  Royal icing is really harder to get out of the piping bag than buttercream so my hand was a little more tired than usual after this lesson.  The cake was firstly covered with fondant then we created Lillies, Petunias and Ponsettias with leaf tip #67 using the Lily flower nail.  We were also taught how to pipe Morning Glory, Daffodil, Carnations and Chrysenthamuns (by far the trickiest).  I also finally learned the technique for Swirl Drop Flowers.  We did it on a hard surface like the table so it was easy to keep the tip steady on the table while we turned our wrist from 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock position to create the swirl. Try doing that on a cake that has buttercream on top without messing up!

The flowers made from royal icing take 5 days to a week to dry and we assemble it onto the cake using royal icing to 'glue' it on.  We also learned to create decorations from royal icing; outlining a pattern and then flooding the inside.  That's how we made what I call the 'Wilton bird'.

Useful tips: Keep the tips of your piping bags filled with royal icing covered with a wet cloth to prevent crusting.

Lesson 12: 2 Tier Buttercream Cake with Roses

There really isn't that much to explain about this lesson except we learned how to stack a 2 tier cake with dowels. The top of the bottom tier was not really iced, we merely smoothed the buttercream from the edge to the centre so it was lightly covered because the roses would cover the layer.

I'm still not happy with my roses as they always seem slightly flat. I need a bit more practice to be more consistent with the results.