My niece turned four this month and since she is very into the Disney Princesses these days, it was an easy decision for her to choose that theme for her party ware. I knew instantly that her birthday cake needed to be all about Princesses, too, so I decided to blow her little mind by making her two 3-D standing princess cakes.

I started with the Wilton Wonder Mold Kit, which makes a cake that looks just like a princess’ skirt. After filling it with batter and baking the cake, I simply flipped it upside down onto a serving plate and it was ready to decorate.

My niece’s two favorite princesses are Snow White and Cinderella, so they became the subjects of the two cakes. I borrowed her existing dolls, removed their clothes, and washed the dolls well. I then wrapped their legs in plastic wrap and stuck them right down into the cake “dress”. The plastic wrap serves two purposes — to keep the doll clean and to keep the cake clean! With hardly any work so far, I already had the cakes looking like real dolls!

The next step was to apply icing to the cake and the dolls to make them fully dressed in their typical attire. The skirts were easy — I just used a small icing spatula to apply a smooth layer of yellow or blue icing to cover the skirt area, right up to the waist. The finishing details for the bodices were a little different for each Princess.

For Cinderella, I used the same blue icing from her skirt and put it in a disposable decorator bag with a size 16 “star” decorator tip (get a full set of icing tips here). I covered the entire bodice with stars and then decorated her hips with bands of white icing made with the size 104 “rose petal” tip. For her sleeves, I used white icing and a size 8 “round” tip to pipe around her shoulders. Cinderella’s gloves had long been lost, so I had to reproduce them with icing, which was a bit tricky. I started by just squirting some icing on her hands and arms, making an effort to cover them. Then I coated my fingers liberally in cornstarch and used my fingers to press the icing down on her arms until it was smooth. I shaped the icing around her arms, covering them as well as I could.

Cornstarch is an essential tool for when you need to handle icing without having it stick to you (and it has no taste). A little on your fingertip will do wonders when trying to tame errant icing!

For Snow White, I used a dark blue icing in and again used the size 16 “star” decorator tip to create the bodice. I switched to a lighter blue for her rounded cap sleeves, which I created by just applying icing with the same size 16 “star” tip in short vertical bars over and over until I had built up the size I wanted. I then put small dots of red on the sleeves. The finishing touch was the collar, which I created with white icing and a size 104 “rose petal” tip.

With not much effort and pretty simple cake decorating techniques, I had two adorable princess cakes ready for my niece’s birthday party. She was absolutely thrilled when she saw them, and even more excited when she found out she could eat them!