Princess Tiara Cake

Princess Tiara Cake

February 2008

I love how this cake came out. Fine, I am partial to girly cakes and princesses, what can I say?! It was for a fabulous princess-themed 1st birthday party and I was really excited that the birthday girl was already decked out in her princess dress when I arrived to set up the cake. Adorable.

I've seen a few tutorials on making a tiara/crown out of royal icing and I thought this would be an excellent chance to give it a try. It was a giant disaster. They looked lovely on the mold, but always ended up as shards of sugar during the drying process.

Royal icing tiara before it was reduced to powder. You can almost see it slipping out of my hand here.

So I tried a new tactic. I used a more simplified version of my template and rolled gumpaste into thin lines. This gave it much more structural stability and more flexibility for attaching embellishments like beads and glitter. And every princess knows it is all about the accessories.

Here are the two final gumpaste tiaras getting packed up for the car. The bottom one ultimately earned a place on top of the cake.


Cake Details:
Cake: One tier chocolate and one tier vanilla bean
Filling: Raspberry and buttercream for the chocolate cake layer, and chocolate ganache for the vanilla tier
Icing: Vanilla buttercream
Decorations: Fondant circles and beaded border and a handmade sugarpaste tiara with edible glitter (though no one actually ate the tiara I hope)