Princess Pea's 5th Birthday Party

For Princess Pea's 5th birthday, I wanted to do a themed party. Kind of like a step from a toddler to becomig a big girl. I asked Princess Pea what she wanted to do and she told me that she wants a Rapunzel themed birthday. Actually, she wanted a My Little Pony, then a Hello Kitty one first until she settled for Rapunzel. Her birthday is in December and I started planning out the cake design in August! Yes that's right, back in August!

The cake is a combination of four different variations you can do. I took little samples from each and made it my own. It was a two layer circle cake with Rapunzel's tower, her hair, and the colors to match the tower scenery.

The top cake layer looked a lot like this cake, minus the bridge, trees, and rocks. I did want to add the rocks, but I couldn't find the chocolate rocks that this person used. The bottom layer I took the design of  the My First Disney Princess Toddler doll Rapunzel dress. I found a way to make the tower from this cake. It was very simple, just use a cake dole and two regular ice cream cones. Of course you have to have the tower roof so I used this idea. Again, another simple trick. Use a sugar cone dipped in purple candy melts. Worked out great, especially to get the shingle effect for the roof. Lastly, I really wanted Rapunzel's hair to stand out from the rest of the cake. After looking around, I stumbled upon this cake. I really liked how the hair wrapped around the entire cake instead of just a short piece hanging out of the tower. I managed to get the hair to start out of the tower like the first cake and wrap around the two layers. I made some homemade marshmallow fondant for most of the cake decorations. Princess Pea had fun making it with me and really enjoyed the white goo turn into colorful fondant.

I asked Princess Pea what type of cake she wanted and immediately she said strawberry! Who'd of thought ;) So I got two cake boxes of strawberry cake and made them "semi-homemade" to taste like it came from the bakery. I found the tip on how to do this on pinterest of course. All you need to do is to add one more egg, or two if you want it rich, use melted butter instead of oil and double the amount. So if the box says to use 1/3 cup of oil, use 2/3 cup of melted butter instead. Lastly, use milk instead of water. Mix it well and bake according to the directions and there you have it! A way to make your cake taste like it came from the bakery without having to spend 20-40 bucks for one! It actually turned out very moist and did taste like I got it from the bakery at Walmart. As for the icing...that's a whole other story.

You see, in my household, my husband likes the buttercream and I like the whipped. So to compromise, I iced the cake with the whipped and I used the buttercream to hold the layers together and to use for any piping I needed. Princess Pea could care less, she just likes cake!

Procedure wise, I baked the cake a few days before the party, put the layers together, and made all my fondant pieces, covered everything, and stuck it in the fridge. The night before, I iced the entire cake and decorated, that way if anything happened over night, I would have the next day to fix it up instead of dealing with the decorating the day of the party.

The cake turned out to be a success! Everybody loved it and Princess Pea was so surprised!