Minnie Mouse Cake

My family has always been big Disney fans, and the newest generation is no different.  Here is a cake I made for my grand-niece.

And here is a side view of the gum paste bows. Those things were a pain in the butt to make.

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I started by make the gum paste topper.  Instead of using a paper templet and cutting the shape by hand, I made a plastic cutter using my nifty Creality Ender Pro v2 - 3D Printer.   That thing has come in so handy; it is now my favorite cake decorating tool!  I wrote a blog post about 3D printers for cake decorating.  The post can be found HERE.

I made cutters for each feature.

And here is the finished topper.  I drew in the eyelashes with an edible black marker, and dusted the creases in the bow with Roxy & Rich Princess Pink petal dust.  To make the little dots I use tiny little circle cutters.  The cutters are advertised as a clay tool, but they work great for fondant and gum paste too.

I also made the gum paste bows and streamers ahead of time which gave them plenty of time to dry and harden.  I used foam cake dummies (in the size of my cake) so I would get the size and proportions of bows correct.  Nothing worse then making stuff ahead of time and having it too big or too small for the cake.

Construction of the cake began with an 8" tier frosted with American Buttercream.  I used a 12" white foil cake drum and a chop stick for the center dowel.   I like using chop sticks because I find them the perfect thickness and height for a two tier cake.  I don't show it in this picture, but I used 4 Extra Wide Fat Boba Straws to support the top tier.  For the fondant accents I just used Wilton's Black and White fondant.  If I'm covering a cake in fondant, I use a better tasting brand, but for accent work the Wilton (or the Sunny Side Up brand from Hobby Lobby) works fine.  I used the Wilton Strip cutter to make the fondant strips all the same width.  

The second tier is 6", and here I am removing the top acrylic disk.  I use acrylic disks to get the straight sides, flat top, and sharp edges.  The disks make the task so easy, and they are really worth the investment.  I got mine from Cake Safe.   I have a blog post about how to use them HERE.

Next I rolled a bunch of balls in black, white, and pink fondant.  I cut out white fondant circles and made another cutter (using my 3D printer) to make the number 2.

I also make the tiny mouse silhouettes using circle cutters. The pink gum paste bows were made using a silicone mold, and I used edible glue to stick the bow to the silhouettes.

Once I had all the accents made it was just a matter of putting everything on the cake.

Easy, peasy.  NOT!  It only took me about 10 hours to make the cake.  LOL.  Good thing I like my family.  

Happy Decorating,

Carol