I made this Beauty and the Beast Belle Cake for a 5-year-old girl’s birthday. Talking about girls and their obsession with princesses and castles and fairy tales! The truth is that the girl’s mother wanted me to use a real Disney Belle doll for this princess cake. In fact, she was supposed to provide one to me so that I could use it for the princess cake.
Belle Cake
Unfortunately, she could not get one for me on time. So we had to resort to a plain doll pick I had in stock with me. Luckily the doll pick I had had brown hair. At least that matched Belle’s hair since the facial features did’t quite match Belle’s. And of course, I could have arranged the hair to look like that of Belle’s but I am really bad at hair do’s. Hence I decided that its better to leave it down than to attempt to put in up.
I have made a couple of doll cakes before. So this was not something new for me, except that the cakes I made in the past were all decorated with buttercream. This one was decorated with fondant. Anyway, I think this is not too bad for a first time in fondant and the birthday girl was very happy to receive this too!
How to Make A Belle Cake
These were the main supplies I used to make and decorate this cake:
- Cake – this was a bowl-shaped cake that I baked in a stainless steel bowl I had at home. I used my butter pound cake recipe and used this method to decide on the amount of batter to prepare for the cake.
- Buttercream – Since the cake was baked in a bowl, I did not layer and fill it with any icing. Buttercream was used only to crumb coat the cake before covering it with fondant.
- Fondant – I used Satin Ice for this project. For the yellow, I tinted white fondant with Wilton Golden Yellow food color. For the brown, I tinted white fondant with Wilton Brown food color. The red and green for the red rose and leaf in Belle’s hand was white fondant tinted in Wilton Red and Wilton Leaf Green .
- Doll pick – I purchased this from a local cake decorating supply shop.
- Alphabet cutter – These were also purchased from a local cake decorating supply shop. I used these for the lettering on the cake.
- Flower plunger cutter – I used this cutter to cut out the pale yellow flowers on Belle’s gown as well as the red flowers on the cake board and held the candles.
- Needle tool
- Sugarcraft knife
- Ruler
- Pizza cutting wheel
- Floral wire – I used just a tiny bit of wire on this cake and that was for the rose stalk in Belle’s hand.
- Shortening – Shortening was used an a glue for this project along with fondant glue.
- Fondant glue
Belle Cake
And this was how I put this Belle princess cake together:
Preparing the cake
- The decorating process was pretty straightforward. Since I baked the cake in a bowl shaped pan, no carving was required.
- I started by crumb coating the cake and then covered it with a layer on white fondant. And then I rolled yellow fondant (tinted with Wilton Golden Yellow color) and covered on the white fondant. I made it a point to not press down the yellow fondant at the bottom edges of the cake. In fact, I left it frilly to give it a natural shape of a ball gown. And if you notice, the white fondant underneath could be seen and that was also on purpose.
Covering Belle’s dress
- Next, I inserted the doll pick in the center of the cake and used the same yellow to cover the bodice. And using the same color, I cut long strips of fondant, folded it along its long edge and cut it into short strips of about 7 to 8 cm lengths. I arranged these strips in 2 curved layers all around the dress about one third below the waist. And to hide the joints of the strips, I added tiny 5 petal flowers that were cut in 3 different sizes in descending order.
The red rose on Belle’s hand
- As for the red rose on Belle’s hand, I made this by hand and attached it to a short piece of floral wire. I also added a green leaf which I formed by hand (the veins marked by my needle tool).
- As for Belle’s hair, I could not do it up to match Belle’s hair do, so I tied it half instead.
Belle Cake
Decorating the Belle cake board
- And the princess was placed on a decorated cake board. I covered the cake board in brown fondant and using my ruler as a guide, I marked long horizontal lines, each about 2.5 cm apart. And then I marked vertical lines in alternate order along each row. And using my needle tool, I further marked short wood grain marks on the edges and marked tiny holes using a toothpick at the corner of each of the rectangle sections. Overall, the idea was to create wooden plank floor effect.
- And then I placed Belle on the decorated cake board giving enough space to arrange the 3D lettering on the front.
The 3D alphabets
- I cut the 3D letters using my block letters cutters in the same yellow fondant I used for Belle’s dress except that I added some CMC powder to it before cutting the letters out. This is to make sure the letters set hard and could hold their shape when placed upright on the cake board. I left them to harden for a few hours before attaching them to the cake board with glue.
- And finally, so that there is place to put the candles on the cake, I attached 5 red flowers that I cut using my flower plunger cutter to the cake board. And I poked the candles into the flowers before the fondant dried so that the candles would stand in place.
Belle Cake
And that was pretty much how I decorated this cake.
Hope you enjoyed reading this. Happy Decorating 🙂
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