Saturday, February 12, 2011

Mosaic Cake

Like any one who has a small child, I was easily coerced into seeing the movie Tangled that came out around Thanksgiving. My daughter Charlotte fell in love with the newest Disney princess as did I, but what transfixed me more was the amazing artwork and images that made the movie so prettily breathtaking.

First of all, the color purple was everywhere, in every shade. Rapunzel loved to free hand paint the walls of her tower. Mosaics were throughout the town, and the sun was an especially important theme. And who could forget those pretty lanterns? So of course what this added up to me was how to design a cake around all these images (keep scrolling to see some examples of my inspiration).

Since moving to Colorado, though, I haven't had many excuses for making cakes. Lucky for me, it was time for Sweet Times in the Rockies again. Hooray!

I've always wanted to make a mosaic cake, and that was my jumping off point. The cakes were all covered in fondant as normal, and then I hand cut. each. one. of. those. tiles. and placed them on the cake in different designs. How long did it take, you ask? Centuries. (OK, I estimate around 60 hours from beginning to finish.)

The bottom tier showcases the golden lanterns floating into the sky. I hand painted the lanterns with a mixture of Super Gold dust and vodka. The next tier was a purple, pink and yellow swirl pattern that repeats throughout the movie. The next tier features the sun which you see in the town square, Rapunzel's crib and throughout the palace. I also painted the sun with the Super Gold mixture. And the top tier is the purple, pink and yellow swirls again.


At the top of the cake is Rapunzel's magical golden flower, which gave Rapunzel her golden hair. In the movie, the flower loosely resembles a lily with swirls coming out of it. To make it I used a lily cutter, dusted it gold, and then used Isomalt (Cake Play new Isomalt sticks are awesome!) to make the swirls come out of the top.

Once that was all done the cake looked intricate but flat. So I added on the pink flowers to each tier, with isomalt swirls coming out of them too. Pretty cool cake, I have to say!
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