Hello and welcome to Cupcake Addiction's Ariel Little Mermaid Giant Cupcake Tutorial where
I'm going to be showing you how to make this absolutely stunning little mermaid cake using
your giant cupcake mold.
If you don't happen to have a giant cupcake mold, never fear, you can use regular cake
carved to shape or you can use a Dolly Varden tin to achieve the same shape for the cake
that I'm going to be showing you how to make today.
To complete this cake, you're going to need: Your Ariel doll, and try to get one wearing
a plastic bikini, not a fabric upper half.
I've also got a circle cutter which I'll leave dimensions to in the description box below.
And a small size piping tip.
A little bit of white shimmer and some plain water.
I've got an ice cake board.
I iced mine blue to match the cake and I've got a tutorial which shows you how to ice
a cake board on my channel which I'll link to in the description box below.
I've got some fondant in green, a caramel brown and then a teal color.
A serrated edge knife.
A sharp knife.
And an offset spatula.
I've got a large bread knife.
I've got some cookie crumbs, any white cookie will do, just crashed.
A little bit of our perfectly pipeable buttercream frosting in blue and white which I will also
link to the recipe for in the description box below.
I've got my giant cupcake.
And if you've not baked one of these, I do have a Giant Cupcake Basics Series which I
will also link to in the description box below, and that shows you how to bake and extract
your giant cupcake so it's sitting here like this ready for you to decorate.
I've got a fondant rolling pin.
A pair of scissors.
And just a couple of paintbrushes.
I've also got a little bit of corn flour just in a corn flour shaker for preparing our surface
for fondant.
And I've got some of my fondant sea creatures.
Now I've just made these for Fondant Friday so there's a whole tutorial which shows you
how to make all of these little sea creature details.
They're a bit of an optional extra for this cake.
So let's get started.
The first thing that you want to do is you want to take the base of your giant cupcake
and turn it upside down, and you want to just trim off as little as you possible can to
give a bit of flat bottom because you want to keep much height to this cake as possible.
Then using your bread knife, you just want to cut that base in half so that you've got
2 nice, even halves.
You want to just position the top on top.
And then you want, once again, taking as little as you need to do to give it a flat base,
just carve off a little tiny bit so that you've got a nice flat fit between the two halves.
Take your smallest serrated edge knife, and holding the top half on the bottom half, you
just want to carve around the edges so that the join in between the two is about the same
size, and you're carving it into that classic kind of a Dolly Varden shape.
Hold your little Ariel up every now and again just to make sure you've got the right sort
of a size height for your cake so you know roughly how much frosting to add in the middle.
I'm really happy with the sizing, so once again, I'm just tripping off any excess to
give it a really nice neat shape.
So you should have 3 sections.
You want to start with your bottom section and just spoon on a little bit of that perfectly
pipeable buttercream frosting.
You just want to give this a really nice sort of a coating in between each layer.
Now you want to take your circle cutter.
With your circle cutter, just push it in.
Often I find just pushing it in and just twisting it is enough to release that cake from the
inside.
But if you find your cake is not going to come, pull the circle cutter out and then
just use your serrated knife to just kind of dig in and help you lift up that core of
cake.
You want to make sure that you don't cut all the way through the base of that cake.
You do want the very very bottom layer of your cake to still be cake and you don't want
Ariel's feet touching the cake board.
You want it to be about nesting in cake.
Give the inside of that circle a little coat of buttercream frosting so that your cake
doesn't dry up.
And then you want to core out your middle section.
This one is probably the easiest, you just pop in the circle cutter and pop out the core
of cake.
It's really really easy one to core.
Stick that second layer nice and evenly on top, and once again give the inside a coat
of that buttercream frosting to stop it drying out.
For the top half, this is your most fragile half.
Core the top section of it out but it's going to be a little bit bigger than our other ones.
So you're going to need to use your serrated edge knife to just go around the same shape
as that circle cutter and take out the rest because it's quite a high layer.
A little bit more buttercream frosting on the top of that second tier or second layer
of your cake, and you can position your top layer on top.
That's the basic shape.
So I'm going to hold her up and just pop her inside.
And you can see here when I hold this knife to her, my cake comes up to about the bottom
of her bikini line.
That's about where you want your cake height to sit before you add any of your detail.
Take your caramel-colored fondant and a little bit of corn flour, and just roll that fondant
out into a nice thin relatively large piece.
I'm just going to hold that over the top of my cake to make sure I'm happy that it's going
to cover the top sort of 2/3 of the cake.
And then I'm going to use my knife to cut a really rough circle.
A pizza cutter is actually a better tool for this because it gives you a smoother cut but
I'm just going to use a knife today because it's what I've got handy.
So once your fondant circle is rolled out, take that buttercream frosting and you want
to apply a thin crumb boat to the outside of your giant cupcake, just to the top 2 layers.
The reason that I'm doing this after I've rolled out that fondant is because I want
that buttercream to be really really fresh and still sticky so that our fondant got something
to stick on to.
Don't forget to put frosting on the inside of that little hole where our Ariel doll is
going to be sitting.
So now that I've got a nice crumb coat, I'm going lift up that piece of fondant and I'm
just going to lay it directly over the top.
With this, you now want to smooth it out but don't be too fussy because this is supposed
to be a rock and rocks are not completely smooth.
So you can see here with these little pleats, I'm just lifting them out and then smoothing
them down.
So just take the pleats, sort of lift it out, smooth it down.
And you really want to make sure any wrinkles that you have are closer to the bottom half
of the cupcake rather than the top because we are going to be able to disguise those.
Now I'm using my fingers just to sort of carve some little ridges into our rock to bring
it to life as a rock and stop it looking so much like a cake, so really I'm just using
my little finger and my second little finger and I'm just carving around the edges, carving
around the top so you can see, just sort of putting some ridges and divots in.
I'm going to take my sharp knife and I'm just going to cut around the edges.
Don't be worried about wrinkles but if you've got any big sort of chunky bits of overhang
of fondant, just cut them away because we don't want to have to use a huge amount of
blue frosting to cover those little imperfections up.
Taking your blue frosting, now you want to crumb coat the very bottom layer of your giant
cupcake.
You shouldn't actually get very many crumbs at all in this coat because when you bake
in a silicone giant cupcake case, it actually seals the cake really nicely on the side.
Once you're happy you've got a good basic crumb coat, you want to make sure that you're
bringing that frosting right up over the join so you can no longer see where the join of
your caramel fondant meets the bottom half of your cupcake.
It's time to move the cupcake on to the board.
So you want to take a little bit of blue frosting and that's just going to act like a bit of
a glue to stick our cupcake in place.
And then you want to use your offset spatula, just slide it directly underneath the cake
and then you want to pop your 2 hands underneath and just carefully pick up your cake.
Now stick it on the board and straight away drop it.
Get your hands out of the way because they're going to be covered in blue frosting and you
really want to tidy up before you go risking touching any of your cake and getting frosting
everywhere.
So now our cake is looking like this, we want to start filling in a bit of a gap.
You'll have a gap between the base of the cake and the cake board, so just fill that
in with a bit of that frosting and make sure that you've got absolutely no gap.
Once you're happy that you've filled the gap, you can see I'm just moving my offset spatula
back and forward, and back and forward which is just giving it a little bit of a wavy effect
and just adding a bit of a wave texture to the blue which actually resembles our ocean.
Once you've got your sort of ocean effect in the bottom half of your giant cupcake coated,
I'm going to bring the frosting down on to the board and this really brings the board
and the cake together and it makes your cake board part of the cake rather than just a
cake sitting on a board.
It actually becomes one with the cake.
So I'm just smearing down little offset spatula blobs of that frosting.
And then I'm going to take some of those shortbread crumbs or biscuit crumbs and I'm just going
to put 3 or 4 little handfuls just around the outside of the cake to kind of look like
the sandy base of the ocean floor, once again adding to the 3-dimensional effect of our
cake.
To make Ariel's tail, you want to roll out your teal fondant in a bit of a shape that's
fatter at one end and thinner at the other.
This is going to make the mermaid tail and the one thing you want to remember with this
is it has to be at least the length of her body.
A little bit longer is actually better.
Nothing worse than a short stumpy tail.
Position it on the cake to make sure it's actually going to fit on your cake and use
your hand to smooth it down so that it's kind of flat-ish on front but still 3-dimension.
You can see here, it's actually just under her bikini line so it's quite a bit longer.
I'm just going to make sure that I'm flattening it off and that I'm keeping the taper of the
end of that tail really nice and sharp because you don't want that to get too fat.
To add in Ariel, you want to just take your sharp knife and just cut a slit in that fondant
and add her in toes first so you don't rip any of that fondant.
You keep that really nice rock surface.
Now you want to cut just the top section, a centimeter or so, off that tail because
we're going to use that to cover the back of her bottom and you want to just position
that tail nice and close up with her waistline.
So you're happy that the length of your tail is fine, we want to add the scaly detail,
which is where our small piping tip comes in.
And if you don't have a small piping tip, you can also use a pen lid or something like
that to get the same effect.
Make sure that you're getting the sides of the tail, as well as the fronts when you're
adding that detail in.
Now you want to take a little bit of water and you're just going to paint the back of
it with just a little bit of water, pop it right up against her waist, and bring it down
on the cake.
I found it looked best off a little bit of an angle rather than straight up and down.
So you can see there, I'm just curling the tail a little bit and that's now stuck on
just using a little bit of water.
Use your fingers just to make sure it's really nice and flushed and tapered up against her
hip.
Now you want to take a little bit more of that green fondant and you just want to roll
it, kind of use your fingers to roll it the center of the little snake or sausage because
you do want to have 2 fatter ends on this particular snake.
Make sure that it's long enough to go around.
But this is essentially, I guess, the top of her mermaid tail where her waist and the
tail actually meet.
So I'm happy that that's going to stick without using any water but if your fondant is not
quite as sticky as mine, you can use just a little bit of water to attach it.
Take another little section of fondant and just roll it out and this is just going to
be to cover her bikini bottom.
So once again, I'm happy mine is going to stick without water but you can use water
if you'd like something to stick it on with, and then just use your sharp knife just to
press that fondant right down into that rock so that it's really reallly nice and flush.
Trim off any edges and just make sure that you're getting it as seamlessly integrated
into her tail as possible.
Roll another little sausage or a snake out of that caramel-colored fondant and you just
want to check it for size.
Once you're happy that it's going to go nicely around her bottom, add a little bit of water
on the back and we're just going to use that to stick on.
We're just really going to kind of bring the rock and the mermaid together and it just
adds a little bit more detail but it also just combines the two a little bit better.
Now I look at my mermaid here and I decided she's a little bit skinny on the hips so I
just rolled 2 little teardrop shapes and just added them on to the tips because once I've
added on those extra details, the top of her mermaid tail was just a touch skinny.
To integrate those properly, I'm going to use my piping tip again and just add on some
of those little scales and that's just going to give her kind of a bit more of a bit defined
mermaid bottom shapes sitting on the rock.
Take some of your lighter green fondant and roll it out really really nice and thin for
our tail, and then I'm just use my sharp knife to cut out my tail shape all in one piece.
So I'm just free handing this.
This piece of fondant will be quite flimsy because it is really thin so just make sure
that you're supporting it with your hands.
And if you rip one or two of them, don't worry, you might just need to have a couple of go's
at this.
Make sure that you neaten off your sides and your edges with a knife or with your finger
so you don't have any raggedy edges there.
And then you want to use the back of that knife, not the front of the knife just to
add in some sort of light line details to give that tail a little bit of texture.
I'm just using my knife here just to russ up that buttercream frosting because it's
been sitting for 10 minutes or so and it would have formed a crust.
By using the knife, it just helps it to regain its stick.
A little bit of water on the top section of the back of that tail and down it goes sticking
partly to the buttercream frosting and partly to the bottom of her mermaid tail.
Perfect!
She's really starting to take shape.
Using that same light green color again, you want to roll out a really really thin snake
of fondant.
Cut the center section because it's normally the most even section and just position it
around the top of her mermaid tail.
You want...It just sort of come down that center join and then you just want to make
sure that you're pushing it down and use your knife to tuck it in so that it's a really
nice neat finish.
This just adds another level of detail.
But I think it really brings the fins and everything, brings all the colors together.
Now's the fun part, we get to add all of our details.
So these are the little sea creatures that we made in last Fondant Friday's Tutorial.
You can add as many or as few of these as you like.
I'm just taking seaweed and I'm pushing it directly into the buttercream frosting.
I'm actually breaking mine off at different lengths so that it's all at different lengths
and it's not all the same size.
With your details, make sure that you're adding a real lot of color because this is what's
going to make your cake absolutely pop off the cake board.
And don't neglect the back of your little mermaid.
She needs starfish and seashells and all sorts on the back as well.
Basically, there you've got your gorgeous Ariel little mermaid giant cupcake cake.
I hope you guys have absolutely loved this tutorial.
I had such a fun time making it.
If you've enjoyed it, make sure that you head on over to my channel and check out the other
ideas that I've got for your giant cupcake mold, as well as all things sweet.
As always, thanks very much for tuning in to My Cupcake Addiction and I hope you have
an awesome time making this cake.