I love making Sophia's birthday cake each year. She has some of the BEST bespoke cake themes - one year it was Gruffalo and Gruffalo's child, and another it was Zog and the flying doctors.

This year she took a bit of a break from her bookish themes and went FULL DISNEY.

When her mum suggested full Disney I had a slight dread that it was going to be Disney princess themed. Only because I find a lot of Disney princesses problematic. The entire premise is problematic. Hear me out. Sleeping Beauty needs a strange man to kiss her while she's unconscious, Snow White also needed a randomer to kiss her while she's knocked out to save her. Why was no one actually doing sensible CPR? Ariel peddled her VOICE in order to get with her prince. And Cinderella? She was a literal domestic slave and her enslavers never got punished. Sure, I'm really pleased she got out of that awful environment at home with her step mum and step sisters, even if it meant it was through marriage...could she not have reported those awful women for breaking the law?? Girl, you're literally married to the future King. You can easily have those runty women charged and put away. But we don't get to see that. Anyway, young girls don't need to be taught that the only way they can be saved is by a rich, handsome, privileged man. That's it, rant over*.

Luckily for me, Sophia wanted a Mickey and Friends themed cake. Featuring Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Daisy and Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto and Chip and Dale. And that's not all...she wanted the full on Magic Kingdom Castle too. Ooooof.

Having so many decorative elements meant a cakescape would be the best method. We could've gone for 3 tiers where the hand modelled characters would be decorating the cake all around however I wanted the cake to be showing off ALL elements together, all at once in one snapshot. The only way to do that is by having the most surface area to decorate and that could only happen with multiple cakes on the same level, not stacked. Therefore, a cakescape.

The edible sculpted figurines are made of modelling sugarpaste. We had to make the castle out of rice krispie treats covered with sugarpaste though as otherwise it would be too heavy as a cake topper.

We had no plan for this cake. That's kind of the beauty and horror of cakescapes. I'll have a rough and general picture in my head about what I'd like placed where, but when it actually comes to decorating it there is SO MUCH of winging it. This cake took 2.5 days and I feel like I need a week off now.

It's a total trust in the process type of situation. We start with two tiers of Hero sponge in vanilla and chocolate crowned with the Disney castle. 

Looks a bit bland huh? Yup. A castle needs a moat. But we're up high, so make it a stream.

I already am starting to love this. I love making water details with buttercream in tones of blue and white.

And then, completely randomly, I feel like this cakescape needs a rainbow. I don't know why, but I just could not think of anything else that would better bring the theme together. So I made a rainbow fault line tall 6" cake and placed it next to the 2-tier.

Oh, and these cute little log cakes with piped grass details!

And now the best part of decorating a cakescape - placing all the edible cake decorations on to make it POP.

Daisy and Donald sitting on top of buttercream clouds.

Pluto in his little dog house.

Goofy, just hanging around looking goofy.

Mickey and Minnie by the castle overlooking the kingdom.

And probably my favourite part of the cake...Chip and Dale with their acorns on a log cake.

All together, it's really a feast for the eyes. And I just know the kids at Sophia's party are going to go wild looking at all the various details all around the cake (X-Ray's cakescapes end up becoming the main event at the end of the event!).

I hope you enjoyed watching me make this cake as much as I enjoyed making it. If you'd like a custom cake, get in touch via WhatsApp with your budget, portions and delivery date and let's make the magic happen!

Love,

Reshmi xoxo

*but of course, if you'd like a Disney Princess themed cake, I promise you I will throw my absolute all into it, despite those princesses being far from feminist icons.