Diary of a Cake Stylist: The Little Mermaid

The little mermaid cake was a hit at this 7th birthday party!! All the girls wanted to eat Ariel's flower and the boys wanted to eat the eyes... yes, that's kids nature :). This time, I stayed away from the typical chocolate cake and ventured with a "peaches and cream" cake. A regular sour cream cake with pieces of peaches and filled with pastry filling (similar to whipped cream) with peach pieces as well in order to stay in the same flavor subject. The cake was then covered in butter cream using the star tip method. It was a hit with both children and adults alike!

The HOW:
I used the Wilton Disney Princess Ariel Cake Pan to bake my "peaches and cream" cake. I then covered the cake with a thin layer of icing leaving the cake outlines for help.

For decorating this cake I followed the included pan instructions, which suggest piping tips 3, 16 and 21. Black icing is a little difficult to get, so I just used the Wilton Black Icing Tube and attached piping tip #3 as a shortcut. You can attach any piping tip size to these tubes!!

For the eyes, instructions suggested piping blue buttercream, but I wanted to create some depth in the eyes so I tinted some Wilton Piping Gel with a little blue gel icing color.

Although you can buy the little mermaid icing color kit (Disneys Little Mermaid Icing Color Set), I opted for making mine since I can create these colors with the basic set of gel coloring from Wilton that I already own (basic wilton set or Wilton Set of 12). In order to obtain the skin color icing, I played with brown and pink gel colors on my white buttercream.