Family birthday-JS's cake - Disney princesses

I was put off preparing buttercream and/or fondant cakes for a while as my family was not too keen on the taste and high butter/sugar content of these decorations. But as I re-started my baking habit in May, I started to hanker after those beautifully decorated cakes again. I remembered that I had once bought a set of plastic Disney princess 3D cake toppers at YX's insistence some years back, only to realise that I had not put that expensive purchase to good use yet.

My niece (JS) birthday was coming up soon in mid June, so I whatsapped my sister to ask what the little gal preferred. Apparently her current favourites were Frozen, Ben and Holly, Peppa Pig. I had made a Peppa Pig cake before, and JS would be having a Frozen-themed cake for celebrations in her childcare, so I decided to use the 3D cake toppers and try my hand at fondant again.

I baked the sponge cake layers using a sponge cake premix (the Prima brand 'Optima' flour) on Tuesday. On Wed, I whipped up half a batch of Mousselline Buttercream (recipe from 'The Cake Bible') to fill and cover the sponge layers. I was deciding between this and the sweeter / more-likely-to-crust normal buttercream, and eventually decided on this as the temperatures were soaring these days (34 deg Celsius in the afternoons when I'm doing baking/ decorating). I remembered that fondant cakes weren't supposed to be refrigerated so I needed an icing that could hold up at room temperature.

(Top: baked 2 pieces of 8x5inch sponge cakes.

Bottom: I wanted a square cake, so I split one of the cakes and joined together. 

And filled and frosted together)

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COVERING WITH FONDANT

(Top: sides of cake covered with store-bought white fondant. Top of cake covered with green fondant which I coloured using Wilton's gel -blue and yellow. Looks like I need to work on joining the seams, which I had hurriedly pinched together while the buttercream was 'melting' underneath

Bottom: Green buttercream leaves to cover the ugly seams)

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ADDING FLOWERS AND "TREES"

With the "defective" areas settled, it was time to add the frills. I placed the toppers and estimated the space that would be available for the other 'garden/flower' decorations.