Princess birthday cake

As much as us grownups may be impressed by an intricately decorated novelty cake, let’s face it, it’s the kids that love these creations the most. So when my friend said his little girl saw this amazing cake and requested something for her birthday, obviously I had to do my best to replicate the beautiful two-tiered Princess Sofia-inspired cake.

The inside of the cake was as straight-forward as they come: chocolate cake with a chocolate filling, so of course I went with my go-to recipe for the cake, filled it with chocolate ganache and covered it in chocolate buttercream.

For the cake, I divided the batter between three 8-inch round pans and 1 6-inch round (which I later realized was a mistake, as I should have gone with a slightly smaller cake for the top tier, as it ended up looking a bit wonky – but then again, this way it was just more cake for everyone!).

I ended up with 5 layers for the bottom tier, two full layers for the top, and two extra ones cut from the humps I removed from the larger cakes when I leveled them.

For the filling, I used a double batch of my simple chocolate ganache recipe, which, as always, I prepare a day ahead to give it time to cool and set up overnight.

Finally, for the crumbcoat and final frosting on the outside, I whipped up a batch of my italian meringue buttercream and stirred in 200 gr. of melted chocolate.

I covered the bottom layer with purple fondant and the top one with white and stacked the cakes using large straws for support.

For the decorations, two newly acquired tools came in very handy: one is a silicone mold that produces strings of fondant “pearls”, which I used for both the pink border and the white pearl pendant. The other one is a simple diamond texture mat, which leaves an impression when pressed onto the cake. In the future, I’ll use a thicker layer of fondant and I’ll do it before refrigerating the cake, as I had to push harder than I probably should and then go back to deepen the grooves with a modeling tool. Still it gets the job done. As for the silicone mold, a dusting of cornstarch makes extraction easier, but after a couple of frustrating first attempts, I realized I’d have better luck just placing it in the freezer for a few minutes – it worked like a charm!

The tutorial on Cakes Step-by-Step was very thorough so making the little fondant roses and leaves was pretty easy, as was preparing the “fabric” draped over the top tier.

A small tiara was the final touch to bring it all together (and was the only inedible part of the cake).

And voila, a princess cake for a beautiful little princess-birthday girl!

 

Note: Katerina’s lovely dad doesn’t normally dress like Jack Sparrow, but Sunday marked the beginning of the greek carnival, so this was a costume party 😉

About telethonrunner

I watch copious amounts of TV and write about it. I also watch movies and am ridiculously addicted to cooking shows.

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