Ariel Cake

I was asked to make a cake almost exactly like my daughter L's 3rd birthday cake last weekend. Charlotte, a friend of L's turned 3 last week. The cake was for her awesome princess party last weekend. It was lots of fun and the cake was a big hit. It is not often that I get to be there when people, other than my family, eat my decorated cakes. It was quite a treat :)

It was decided that we would do a round princess cake and a 12 inch round cake. The princess barbie doll cakes are super easy to make if you have the right bowl. There are two bowls that a lot of people have in their kitchen that are just perfect for this cake. There is the Pampered Chef classic batter bowl or the stainless steel bowl for a KitchenAid mixer. (Wilton sells a pan specifically for this, but that just seems like a waste of money to me.) The KitchenAid mixer bowl would probably yield a larger cake. I ended up with a huge mess because I put an entire recipe of my chocolate cake in the batter bowl, and it ended up spilling all into my oven. What a mess!!! Luckily, I caught it pretty quickly and put a sheet pan under it. The 12 inch cake was a white almond flavored cake. She ended up with a ton of cake left over, but you never want to run out of cake, right?

I used countless pastry bags decorating this cake. I lost count, but I think I had somewhere around 12 different colors in decorating bags around my kitchen. This is the reason that I buy the disposable pastry bags. They are not terribly cheap, but oh so convenient when you are using 10 or more colors per cake.

Many recipes for cake call for cake flour. Cake flour is very finely milled flour made from soft wheat. It has a very low protein content which makes it perfect for tender cakes and cookies. Other flours with higher protein content would make for a much tougher cake. There are ways to substitute all purpose flour for cake flour, like taking out 2 tbsp of all purpose flour per cup of flour. Some people even say to then add 2 tbsp corn starch. While this may work in a pinch, cake flour is truly the ideal flour for soft textured cakes.