My First Princess Cake ~ Sweet Little Mermaid

All about my first Little Mermaid Cake experience...

This was quite a last minute request from one of my sister's friend, Clarryns.  She wanted to have a princess cake for her beloved niece. Knowing that her niece favors Little Mermaid and she can't find any bakery that make it, so she turned to me .. :-)

I took up the challenge ... The birthday girl's name is Sophia. Frankly, this challenge gave me quite some stress as Clarryns wanted a "wow" cake (as Clarryns worked in an authorised Disney distributor store, means she knows the Disney characters well) and I have limited time to do my research.

The little mermaid will be the center piece of the cake, with some sea grass, shells, pearls...

   

    

 I printed out the image, trace onto wax paper. Then I traced the image  onto fondant and  cut according to the traced image. Subsequently I proceed to paste other details i.e. red hair, bra, eyes etc using colored fondant. Once the center piece is done, I continue with the rest of the decorations.

Spot the difference :)

The base cake was chocolate butter cake, filled with chocolate mousseline buttercream.

There were some hiccups during the creation of this cake, one side of the fondant bulges and the surface cracked (on the night prior to collection). The solution to this is to poke it with a toothpick in order to release the air out then smoothen it. However, this time I can't smooth the cracked fondant after releasing the air out, not even applying shortening on the crack area. Usually the fondant will not crack, the crack was due to the fondant has hardened.

My 1st nightmare!

  

     I was under tremendous pressure (+ panic), trying my best to "fix" the cracks until middle of the night. I finally managed to fix it but had a sleepless night as I was praying that no more bulging and cracking the next morning.... (Pleasezzzzz)

camouflage the cracked area with additional decorations ^^

Woke up early the next morning as the cake will be collected around 9. Well, not a very good morning for me... The bulging happens on the other side (Arrgh~)! Again, I was busy fixing the cracked... I felt so upset that I can't do anything more but "camouflaged" with the decorations. I told Clarryns the 'patching', apologized that such incident happened and hope that she understood.

Lessons learnt from this experience:

- do not use long left over fondant (although not expired) i.e. opened package fondant will tend to dry out a little even though it's wrapped with cling wrap and stored in an airtight container. 

- do not put fondant covered cake under a blowing fan, best to keep it in the cake box and cover it.

If the above mentioned are follow accordingly, then the fondant will not have crack, however, accidents do happen sometimes :) 

- do not try to "patch" the cracked fondant, just covered with sugar paste deco.

- poke the bulged area with a toothpick and smooth it with your fingertips coated in shortening.

     I'm glad that Sophia and her family liked the cake (as i received a thank you text message from her beloved daddy on that day), her dad thanked me for the effort. Well, this it worth while all the stress and the sleepless night!

Thank you for stopping by ^^