Rapunzel's Tower Cake

A friend of mine has a little girl who turned five this year and was totally in love with Tangled (who can blame her - totally cute movie)!  She wanted Rapunzel's tower for her cake, so of course I tried to make it as movie accurate as possible.  This to date has been my most challenging and rewarding work, so I'm going to write a bit about the process. 

I started my research by printing pictures of other Rapunzel cakes online that I liked as well as the toy tower you can buy at Toys R Us.  These were a good starting place, but I wasn't thrilled because I thought they lacked authenticity to the movie.  Fortunately, I had Tangled saved on my DVR, so I found a few rare places where only the tower is shown, took pictures with my Nikon, and enlarged them for printing.  This process allowed me to better analyze the colors and detailing on the original tower.  Though an accurate research process is lengthy I consider it my time and do not charge the client until I actually start baking. 

The cake is cut from a yellow sheet cake and is iced in many buttercream layers.  The lavender was flat iced first followed by building out the window with remaining cake, flat icing the white window background and icing the window itself in gold.  I wanted to build out the window so I could pile the hair up and spill it out over the side of the window.  Next, I put shingles on the roof in a dark periwinkle, stones on the tower in dark purple, and bricks on the chimney in gold.  Finally, the tower received it's finishing detail with the green grass; a green and brown tree; braided yellow hair falling from the window pile to the ground; green vines; teal spires; another white and gold window with more hair peeking out; the gold balcony; and lots of flowers in pink, orange, periwinkle, white, and teal. 

I was so proud of my work, but the best part was the little girl's face when she saw her birthday cake.  Her smile lit up the room and she danced around the kitchen singing "I'm Rapunzel!"  My job just doesn't get any better than that.  Her little brother was so excited he asked for a Rapunzel cake for his birthday! 

In addition to making this cake, I also made 48 cupcakes for the party.  This has to date been my largest and most expensive order laid out as follows:  

Icing 6 batches x $2.43 = $14.58
Cakes: 4 x $1.84 = $7.36
Wrapping, Cake Board, and Foils: $3.65 + $1 + $1 = $5.65
Time: 9 hours x $6 + .5 hour x $3 = $55.50
Total: $83.09