Disney Princess cupcake tutorial #1 – Princess Aurora

Do you remember the Disney Princess cupcakes I made for Mini Mousey’s birthday this year? In case you do not remember, here is a photograph of the cupcakes to help gig your memory.

I have had an overwhelming amount of requests to provide a tutorial as to how to make these cupcakes. As I am a lover of the people and in particular baking fanatics, I have decided to oblige. Who would have thought Mini Mousey’s Disney Princess cupcakes would have been so popular?! Clearly, the girl’s got taste.

As you can see from the photograph, I made eight Disney Princesses for Mini Mousey’s birthday. This tutorial will only demostrate how to make one of the eight Disney Princesses, my favourite, Princess Aurora (famously known as Sleeping Beauty). I will release other Dinsey Princess cupcake tutorials with time. But once you see how one is done, you will get the idea as to how to make the others.

Okay, first off, the fondant topper. Ps. You should make the fondant topper or toppers (if you are game enough to make more than one) the day before you intend to bake the actual cupcake or cupcakes!

Step one: Getting the stencils ready

Below you will find two stencils. The stencils are for making the bodice of Princess Aurora’s dress.  Before you print the stencils, adjust the stencil size according to the size of your cupcakes. If you are making regular size cupcakes, the stencil should be about 4.5cm in width. Print the stencils on thick cardboard and cut out the shapes.

Step two: Fondant work

If you are working with white coloured fondant, colour the fondant to the desired shade of pink. Personally, I perfer to use Wilton’s colour gel. Princess Aurora’s dress is quite a deep shade of pink, so you will need to use quite a bit of colouring to get the correct shade. To get the colour for my Princess Aurora’s dress, I used the Wilton ‘Rosado’ colour gel.

Once you have obtained the desired fondant colour, roll out the fondant to about 2mm in thickness. Make sure the fondant is no thicker than 2mm, otherwise the fondant will not dry properly (or alternatively, take too long to dry).

Once you have rolled out the fondant to the desired width, place ‘Stencil #1’ on the rolled out fondant. With a firm hold of the stencil, cut into the fondant and around the stencil using a sharp knife. Don’t press too firmly as this will cause the fondant to flatten. Just assert enough pressure to keep the stencil from moving. Once you have cut out the bodice shape of Princess Aurora’s dress, move it to the side.

As you can see from the photograph, the sleeve of Princess Aurora’s dress is white. So, to make the sleeve, roll out white coloured fondant. Again, the width of the fondant should not be thicker than 2mm. Once you have rolled out the fondant to the desired width, place ‘Stencil #2’ on the rolled out fondant. Using the same techniques as discussed above, cut around the stencil.

Putting the two fondant pieces together is a little trickier than it looks. So take time and care when placing the two together. Using a small amount of water (I cannot emphasise this enough, please only use a small amount of water) brush the surface of the pink fondant shape. The best way to do this is to dip your index finger into a small bowl of water, as you are removing your finger from the water bowl wipe your index finger on the side of the bowl, so that only a small amount of water is actually on your finger tip. Using your wet index finger, wipe the surface of the pink fondant shape. If there is too much water on the fondant, using the same finger, wipe off the excess water.

Carefully, place the white fondant shape on the top of the pink fondant shape. As you can see from the image below, the white fondant shape should be placed directly on the top part of the pink fondant shape. The white fondant shape should be perfectly aligned on top of the pink fondant shape. Once the two fondant pieces are place together, leave the fondant topper aside to dry. 

The fondant topper should look like this:

You should allow the fondant topper to dry for at least 12 hours. It is best to leave it uncovered in a clean environment at room temputure. If you do not allow enough time for the fondant topper to dry, the fondant topper may warp and bend after you place it on top of the cupcake.

Step three: Make the cupcakes

Obviously you do not need a tutorial on this! Just make any cupcakes that you fancy. If you cannot find a recipe, please feel free to use my vanilla cupcake recipe. It is a fairly stock standard recipe, but it turns out perfectly everytime and is known to be a crowd pleaser.

Once the cupcakes are baked and cooled. Get cracking on the butter cream icing. With the butter cream icing, you want a fairly thick icing to ensure that the icing holds shape. Again, if you are uncertain of a recipe, please feel free to use my recipe.

After making the butter cream icing, you will need to colour the icing to match the deep pink fondant shade. When it comes to colouring icing, using Wilton’s colouring gel is the best option. As the colouring gel does not add additional moisture or taste to the butter cream icing. When colouring the butter cream icing, add the colouring gel gradually - you do not want to add to much colouring gel at once because you want to match the colour of the icing to the fondant as closely as possible. If you add too much gel at the one time, the icing colour may become too dark.

Step four: Piping the dress

Once you have the butter cream icing coloured to the desired shade, you can begin to prepare the piping bag. The nozzle you will require to pipe Princess Aurora’s dress is the Wilton 2D. Place the pink icing into the piping bag and get ready to pipe!

To pipe the base of the dress, start from the center of the cupcake base and move the piping bag to the edge of the cupcake, pipe in a circular motion around the cupcake. Continue to pipe the icing in a circular motion around and up the cupcake, until you have a pretty icing tower. At all times, keep the cupcake base still. The only thing that should be moving is your hand and the piping bag in a circular motion. The best thing about using butter cream icing is if you make a mistake, just simply tap the icing off of the cupcake base and start again (remember to tap and not wipe)!

Step five: Putting it all together

Place the dry fondant topper in the center of the pink icing tower. Since the fondant topper has harden, it should stand up perfectly in the center without any need of assistance from a toothpick or wire. If your fondant topper has not had enough time to dry, it will unfortunately bend over the top of the icing (insert sad face here).

TIP OF THE DAY: Once you have assembled the Princess Aurora cupcake or cupcakes, do not cover the cupcakes completely. If you do, the moisture in the cupcake will cause the fondant topper (i.e. the dress bodice) to warp and bend. Although leaving the cupcakes uncovered will cause the cupcakes to dry out slightly, it is the price you have to pay for a Dinsey Princess. 

Enjoy and good luck! 

If you do use this tutorial to make Princess Aurora cupcakes, please share photographs of your creations on the Top the Cupcake facebook page: www.facebook.com/ToptheCupcake.

Also, special thanks to cupcakes_yuyu for the cupcake inspiration.