PRINCESS BIRTHDAY CAKE

Last week I had the honor of making my neighbor daughter's first birthday cake. I chose to make her a princess cake. I have to say, I was pretty proud of myself with this one. I decided to make a giant cupcake and add a tiara of course. 

I thought it would be a nice idea to share how I make these. They seem to be very hard to make, when in reality, they are pretty simple. With a little bit of time, lots of sugar and a little bit of creativity you can create this giant cupcake at home and wow your friends with a cake they will remember.

For this particular occasion I decided to make a chocolate cake, with a candy case and vanilla buttercream frosting. 

First thing you want to do is make your cupcake liner. You can make them with dark chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, white chocolate or candy melts. I decided to go with the candy melts, in the vanilla flavor. You can get them at your local baking store, Amazon or Michael's. They are rather inexpensive if you do not want to worry about coloring your white chocolate or if you want a color that will require tons of food coloring. To make the liner I always use a silicone giant cupcake mold. These silicone cases are the best way to make giant cupcakes. I will explain later why. Once you melt your chocolate, or candy melt per the manufacturers instructions all you need to do is pour it onto your silicone case and spread it around. I usually put the mold on the freezer for a couple of minutes so that the case settles a little bit faster. Once your chocolate is nice and hard you can remove it from the silicone mold.

For the cake, the sky is the limit. You can make your favorite cake recipe or even a box cake if you want to. Any flavor and type of cake is allowed. Really whatever you prefer, just make enough to make about 24 cupcakes! Once you have your cake batter you want to fill your clean cupcake mold (not the chocolate cupcake liner) two thirds of the way. If you are using a silicone cupcake mold (which I recommend you do) the mold has a line already marked of how much to fill. The rest can go on the mold for the top of your cupcake. Be sure to spray a generous amount of cooking spray to prevent the cake from sticking to the mold and it will make it so much easier to remove later. The top of the cupcake usually takes a little bit less to cook than the bottom, so check it at around 40 minutes. The bottom will usually take around 45-50 minutes. 

Once your cake is done, let it cool without removing it from the silicone case. Once it is completely cooled you can remove it from the mold and you can take all the edges out with a serrated knife. Divide it in half so you have two lovely cake layers. You want to coat your chocolate cupcake liner with  buttercream or frosting of your choice. Put the first layer of cake in the liner and frost the top. After that put the second later and frost again. After this you can frost the top and all the areas that have a little gap, add the top of the cupcake and give it a nice crumb coat. Pop in the fridge for 20 minutes so that the icing hardens a little bit. After that, I decided to do flowers using a star tip and a piping bag, but you could use fondant, if you prefer.  

That is all there is to it. People will love how fancy and beautiful these look and will love the special touch of the chocolate cupcake liner! 

This cake was a huge hit at the party and it usually feeds about 20 - 25 people. 

Just so you know, I am self taught and have never taken baking classes, although I have taken cake decorating classes. I learned how to make this cake by watching Elise Strachan from My Cupcake Addiction tutorials, so click here to check her out. She is very creative and talented and you can learn so much from her recipes!