Little Prince Baby Shower Cake

This weekend I made a baby shower cake along with 30 cupcakes.  The theme was 'A New Little Prince' and I was shown a plate and napkin so that I could get the color scheme down pat.

Now, all cakes take longer than I think they're going to.  It seems like every time I do a cake I think to myself 'oh, I have plenty of time, no way I'll end up staying up till all hours this time' and every time I end up rediscovering what it's like to be awake at 3 AM.

So what takes me so long?  I'm not really sure.  Sometimes I get a slow start early on in the day. I don't have a ton of experience nor do I do this as a full time job, so I'm naturally a little slower.  Other times I'm just foolish, like yesterday when I decided I needed to let the buttercream set up for a bit and took a short nap by the pool.  And often I run into unforeseen setbacks, like these crowns:

These crowns are patchwork cutters (as is the crown on the top of the cake).  Patchwork cutters get the best of me fairly often-- it takes me longer than I care to admit to find the best approach to using any given cutter.  And then rather than knocking out 30 crowns in 10 mins like I thought I was going to... Yeah... not sure how long it took but over an hour.

This picture was probably taken around 2 AM. One new tool I tried was using a smocking rolling pin on the stripes to give them some ribbon-like textures.

Also, buttercream cakes...  They technically take less time than fondant, but not really because getting buttercream to be truly smooth is a frustrating endeavor.  Also, there is a definite trade-off between the taste of the buttercream and how cooperative it is.  This cake was cream cheese buttercream which was softer and took longer to crust.  It also had a fair bit of air bubbles and was a bit translucent so it took a few coats until I was satisfied.

The cupcakes (in spite of my general hatred of cupcakes, but I won't get started on that right now) came out really cute too.

I colored the buttercream a very light cornflower blue and piped it in a rosette pattern.  I finished them with the crowns (that turned out to be so labor-intensive) and some blue hologram glitter that made them very festive.

Here's everything set up for the party:

As I was setting up, a little boy yelled out, 'Mommy!  That cake looks like a Cake Boss cake!'  I was pretty excited to receive such a compliment in my sleep deprived state.  Everyone who was there early while I was setting up seemed really excited, which made me happy.  Hopefully they like the taste too!