Lara's 5th Birthday Rapunzel Birthday Cake Step-By-Step

Today Lara turned 5.  My little princess.

This year Lara asked for a Rapunzel (Disney Tangled style) birthday party and, having decided that I wasn't brave enough to attempt a tower of cake, I plumped for a very traditional Barbie-in-a-cake style Rapunzel birthday cake.  I started the cake last Monday and completed it on Saturday morning, I very much enjoyed making this one so I thought I would share the steps that I took to make this, my finest birthday cake to date!

Disney Tangled Rapunzel Birthday Cake

Step 1. Bake it!
I bought an 8 inch tiffin tin from ebay but had read tips online that suggested it would be very hard to get the cake to cook in the middle.  I fashioned a conducting device out of kebab skewers to ensure that heat would get to the centre of the cake.  I made an 8 egg chocolate sponge and used it to make a small round 8-inch cake as well as filling the tiffin tin.  The tiffin cake took very nearly 2 hours to cook at a low temperature (my oven has no markings on it so I can only guess that it was around 100 C.)

Step 2. Crumb Coat
I covered the cooled cake with a chocolate buttercream icing to ensure that the crumbs were sealed in and wouldn't cause lumps in the decoration.  I also used the buttercream to join the tiffin cake and the round cake together (Rapunzel's legs were too long for just the tiffin cake).

Step 3. Marzipan
Not strictly necessary with a buttercream crumb coat but I wanted to make sure that the cake was really really smooth so I put a layer of marzipan onto the skirt.

Step 4. Skirt
I used ready-coloured lilac fondant icing to make the underskirt (the triangular panel at the front).  I bought a very cheap mini rolling pin from ebay to make the floral design.  Then I used LOTS of dark purple fondant to make the rest of the skirt which was in three pieces.  I pressed it down around the waist and used a paintbrush with water to blend the joins.  I used a playdoh cutter to make the white ripples for the lace trim around the hem of the skirt which I 'glued' on with cake glue.

Step 5. Bodice
This was hard!  I made a pattern from paper to match the shape of the doll's upper body and then cut this out of the dark purple icing.  I used lilac icing to wrap around the arms.  Dark purple was used for the puff sleeves which I found hard to puff up.  A small paintbrush helped me to shape and blend the pieces.

Step 6: Detail
I used a piping bag with a very fine round nozzle to pipe coloured icing (icing sugar,water and a couple of drops of food colouring) around the sleeves, neck-line, bodice and corset.  I used an even finer one for the design along the sides of the skirt.  Once dry, I painted the dress in several places with an edible lustre dust (another ebay find) to make the floral pattern stand out and to soften all of the joins (and give it a general magical glow).  Finally I used edible jelly jewels on the cakeboard.  I didn't feel adventurous enough to try modelling Pascal the chameleon out of icing so I bought a little plastic one instead!

Disney Tangled Rapunzel Doll Cake