The Art of Creating a Majestic Headpiece: A Step-by-Step Guide

As I began working on my latest project, I realized that the foundation of any exceptional headpiece is its brim. The brim is like a cake stand, providing a sturdy base for the rest of the design to take shape. It's essentially a mesh of small, intricately designed squares, which I lovingly refer to as "draes." To start, I had to create royal icing, a mixture of mering powder, dried egg white, water, and icing sugar that would serve as the glue holding everything together. The consistency was crucial, so I whisked it until it reached the perfect texture before diluting it with water to make it spreadable.

The name "royal icing" holds historical significance, dating back to Queen Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert in 1840. It was during this time that white icing with intricate decoration was used for the first time, earning its royal moniker. I couldn't help but chuckle at the irony of using this same type of icing on a cake inspired by Beyoncé, known as the queen.

With my royal icing ready, I began working on the body of the hat, starting from the front center and lining up the draes in order. However, I soon realized that perfect lines were not possible with cake, so I decided to work bottom-up to accommodate any gaps or imperfections. As I lined up the draes, I encountered some shiny ones that proved slippery and had to be discarded due to their tendency to become cloudy when touched by royal icing.

To add a touch of elegance to the brim, I used metal rods with small, ornate shapes (or "draes") to create a beautiful, curved design. However, working with these rods presented its own set of challenges. The royal icing was prone to seeping out from under them if applied too thickly, so I had to be delicate and precision-crafted each layer.

As the brim began to take shape, I realized that the shape of the head would require some adjustments in direction. However, instead of trying to perfect the lines, I decided to go with it, working from the front right to left, then back again, until I reached the top of the hat. This approach allowed me to maintain a sense of organic, natural movement.

To add an extra layer of depth and interest to the design, I used small, rounded draes with orzo shapes to create a beautiful curve along the brim. These tiny ornaments added a touch of whimsy and playfulness to the overall design. For the inside of the hat, I decided to use a single layer of royal icing as a base, allowing the dip in the shape to remain visible.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, my masterpiece was complete. The process had been long and arduous, but the end result was well worth it. As I looked at the finished headpiece, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. It was truly a work of art, one that would surely be remembered for its beauty and craftsmanship.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is a cake inspired by the hat that Beyonce is wearing on the cover of her Renaissance album and she's making a movie of her Renaissance tour that drops December 1st so I have decided to recreate this silver sequence hat you look very low resolution today what's going on I do don't I uh yeah we are not doing the interview in the studio because the cake I made this week took so long that we ran out of time you also forgot to Cut the Cake I did I think maybe subconsciously I just didn't want to cut it I'll go to set tomorrow I'll cut it I'll film it with my phone Oran send it to you and then you can add the footage to the end of the video to begin I removed the cakes from their pans I leveled them I layered them and then I soaked them with simple syrup the third cake I didn't actually level because you know how a hat is kind of rounded on top so I thought I might need that and take advantage of it so altogether I had six layers simple syrup once the syrup has soaked in I'm going to fill and stack the cakes now sometimes you guys see me stack the cakes without filling them and carve first it just depends on the shape I'm making but for the Hat I kind of felt like I don't have to carve away that much cake and as a turns out I didn't need the sixth layer that I left the hump on don't worry Eli and I enjoyed it what do you think be's favorite cake flavor is I don't know should know this she's a really private person like Beyond her forming so there isn't a lot about her she's not on her Instagram like filming her life all day long if any of you know let me know cuz one day I'll have to send her a cake yes it's carving time so I have created two templates for myself one is an oval and then one is the top cuz a cowboy hat at the top has a weird kind of almost like a pear shape so first I'm going to flip the cake over and trim out that oval and then I flipped it back and I trimmed out that sort of pear shape and then the the trickiest part is at the top there's kind of like a rim like an indent so I just carefully carved that out you can carve with your sperated knife into the cake and use a spoon to help you remove the cake If It's tricky because what's really tricky about leaving a rim of cake his cake is delicate so it's easy to just sort of knock it off and and crumble it away so that's why it's really important to carve when your cake is cold cold cold now that I'm happy with the shape I'm going to crumb coat the entire hat the trickiest part is that end in at the top and chill and then once the CR coat is chilled I'm going to go back and Ice the cake I'm going to use my little invention to help me keep it it nice and smooth it doesn't need a ton of uh buttercream because I've decided to cover this in fondant so I it smooth it with the invention make sure it's nice and cool so I've decided to cover the hat in a thin layer of fondom technically because I'm covering this cake in a bunch of silver draes I could have left it at just buttercream but this presents a problem one often when you push draes on like the buttercream will want to ooze out in the space between two buttercream is not the most secure thing to hold the draes because the draes are very smooth and shiny on the surface and buttercream is fatty and smooth so I was worried that even though they might stick to begin with when the cake gets soft they might move around a lot what is your favorite Beyonce song that is not like a single like that's not one of the HS oh God that's such a good question so on lemonade there's a song called don't hurt yourself which she does with Jack White of the white stripe oh yeah and it has quite a rock feel for Beyonce and even me I'm not like a rock and roll girl and it's funny the first time I listened to Lemonade it was my least favorite song and the song has kind of like an angry undertone and I I was hooked like I love that song now I just have sort of the body of the hat that would go over your head right so now I have to deal with the brim so at Party City I bought a cowboy hat they had one that was like white mesh and I basically tore apart that kept the brim and the brim had a wire in it which was perfect so it maintained that curve if you remember when I made the Texas cowboy hat with the American flag colors I made the brim out of gumpaste with this I was worried because first of all gumpaste although it dries it still has the ability to braid so I knew because I was going to have to ice on Roy icing and Fiddle with these draes at any point I could crack the brim the brim is basically like a cake stand here yes so brim is like just like a cake sand because even if it was gumpaste okay which is technically edible no one eats gumpaste so I have the brim the cake hat and now I have to get to the fun part of adding all these draes I have all different draes laid out so to begin I'm going to start with the body of the Hat with the square draes oh first of all I made royal icing which is just uh mering powder which is basically dried egg white water and icing sugar and you whisk all this together until it's the consistency you want it to be and then I just took some out and diluted it a bit with water so it' be nice and spreadable and it wouldn't be too Gloppy okay why is it called royal icing if it's just I have no idea I honestly don't I'm going to look it up oh why is it called royal iing someone has already googled this perfect Queen Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert in 1840 was the first reported wedding cake to be decorated using a white icing and its intricate decoration this icing was subsequently named royal icing in honor of the royal marriage it's actually perfect that I'm using it on a cake for Beyonce because she is known as the queen I'm using an offset spatula icing on just a layer of royal icing and then I'm going to begin at the front center of the hat and start to line up these draes I start at the base and line them up in order I have to assume with cake that um it's never going to line up perfectly so there's probably going to be space so I want to make sure that those spaces are at the back so I start at the front center of the hat and then I work to the right to the left to the right to the left until I get to the back okay but when I get to the part of the hat that has those dips I realize the lines are not going to be straight anymore so from this point I decide to work bottom up and the funniest thing was the base row orhan was perfect stop in a plaza I'm sorry I need a moment there's no space that never happens it they all fit perfectly normally you get to the I purposely did this so that if there was a gap it' be on the back of the Hat wow and it fit perfectly but because the hat is sort of concave and it changes Dimension that didn't happen all the way up the cake but from then on I worked bottom up lining up the draes You Know It's tricky because they're so shiny they're slippery some of them I had to toss aside because once you place it and there's royal icing on it and you pull it off it's foggy and cloudy it doesn't look silver anymore so I had to toss those aside there were some there were some draes that did not make it to the concert tour for the brim I'm going to use these rods that's the Dr I have the most of and I have to ice the brim as well but what was funny is because the brim was mesh if I put too much royal icing it was coming out the bottom almost like a Sie the icing was like going through so I had to be very delicate put on a layer and make sure it wasn't like just bleeding out the bottom now I do realize they're going to change direction because the head is round right so long as they're straight so they started to change direction but I just went with it and as usual I'm working starting at the front right left right left all the way to the back the top of the Hat I decided to use the orzo shaped draes just on that curve cuz they're kind of small and pointy but rounded so there's a line of those and then for the inside of the Hat I wanted to make sure that we could still see that dip so if I use a dra that's big we're kind of going to lose that dip in the Hat so what I did instead was paint a layer of royal icing and then I poured in the tiniest rice shaped draes guys if you have any idea how many draes this took leave your guess below hopefully if I've made it in time here is the footage of me cutting it if you didn't cut it in time when you do it I'm just going to have like crickets do it do it yeah so here it is everyone and um I will see you next week okay orhan this is the best I can do this is why I am not the videographer oh it's crunchy oh the brim this is why I didn't want to cut it ready there's cakethis is a cake inspired by the hat that Beyonce is wearing on the cover of her Renaissance album and she's making a movie of her Renaissance tour that drops December 1st so I have decided to recreate this silver sequence hat you look very low resolution today what's going on I do don't I uh yeah we are not doing the interview in the studio because the cake I made this week took so long that we ran out of time you also forgot to Cut the Cake I did I think maybe subconsciously I just didn't want to cut it I'll go to set tomorrow I'll cut it I'll film it with my phone Oran send it to you and then you can add the footage to the end of the video to begin I removed the cakes from their pans I leveled them I layered them and then I soaked them with simple syrup the third cake I didn't actually level because you know how a hat is kind of rounded on top so I thought I might need that and take advantage of it so altogether I had six layers simple syrup once the syrup has soaked in I'm going to fill and stack the cakes now sometimes you guys see me stack the cakes without filling them and carve first it just depends on the shape I'm making but for the Hat I kind of felt like I don't have to carve away that much cake and as a turns out I didn't need the sixth layer that I left the hump on don't worry Eli and I enjoyed it what do you think be's favorite cake flavor is I don't know should know this she's a really private person like Beyond her forming so there isn't a lot about her she's not on her Instagram like filming her life all day long if any of you know let me know cuz one day I'll have to send her a cake yes it's carving time so I have created two templates for myself one is an oval and then one is the top cuz a cowboy hat at the top has a weird kind of almost like a pear shape so first I'm going to flip the cake over and trim out that oval and then I flipped it back and I trimmed out that sort of pear shape and then the the trickiest part is at the top there's kind of like a rim like an indent so I just carefully carved that out you can carve with your sperated knife into the cake and use a spoon to help you remove the cake If It's tricky because what's really tricky about leaving a rim of cake his cake is delicate so it's easy to just sort of knock it off and and crumble it away so that's why it's really important to carve when your cake is cold cold cold now that I'm happy with the shape I'm going to crumb coat the entire hat the trickiest part is that end in at the top and chill and then once the CR coat is chilled I'm going to go back and Ice the cake I'm going to use my little invention to help me keep it it nice and smooth it doesn't need a ton of uh buttercream because I've decided to cover this in fondant so I it smooth it with the invention make sure it's nice and cool so I've decided to cover the hat in a thin layer of fondom technically because I'm covering this cake in a bunch of silver draes I could have left it at just buttercream but this presents a problem one often when you push draes on like the buttercream will want to ooze out in the space between two buttercream is not the most secure thing to hold the draes because the draes are very smooth and shiny on the surface and buttercream is fatty and smooth so I was worried that even though they might stick to begin with when the cake gets soft they might move around a lot what is your favorite Beyonce song that is not like a single like that's not one of the HS oh God that's such a good question so on lemonade there's a song called don't hurt yourself which she does with Jack White of the white stripe oh yeah and it has quite a rock feel for Beyonce and even me I'm not like a rock and roll girl and it's funny the first time I listened to Lemonade it was my least favorite song and the song has kind of like an angry undertone and I I was hooked like I love that song now I just have sort of the body of the hat that would go over your head right so now I have to deal with the brim so at Party City I bought a cowboy hat they had one that was like white mesh and I basically tore apart that kept the brim and the brim had a wire in it which was perfect so it maintained that curve if you remember when I made the Texas cowboy hat with the American flag colors I made the brim out of gumpaste with this I was worried because first of all gumpaste although it dries it still has the ability to braid so I knew because I was going to have to ice on Roy icing and Fiddle with these draes at any point I could crack the brim the brim is basically like a cake stand here yes so brim is like just like a cake sand because even if it was gumpaste okay which is technically edible no one eats gumpaste so I have the brim the cake hat and now I have to get to the fun part of adding all these draes I have all different draes laid out so to begin I'm going to start with the body of the Hat with the square draes oh first of all I made royal icing which is just uh mering powder which is basically dried egg white water and icing sugar and you whisk all this together until it's the consistency you want it to be and then I just took some out and diluted it a bit with water so it' be nice and spreadable and it wouldn't be too Gloppy okay why is it called royal icing if it's just I have no idea I honestly don't I'm going to look it up oh why is it called royal iing someone has already googled this perfect Queen Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert in 1840 was the first reported wedding cake to be decorated using a white icing and its intricate decoration this icing was subsequently named royal icing in honor of the royal marriage it's actually perfect that I'm using it on a cake for Beyonce because she is known as the queen I'm using an offset spatula icing on just a layer of royal icing and then I'm going to begin at the front center of the hat and start to line up these draes I start at the base and line them up in order I have to assume with cake that um it's never going to line up perfectly so there's probably going to be space so I want to make sure that those spaces are at the back so I start at the front center of the hat and then I work to the right to the left to the right to the left until I get to the back okay but when I get to the part of the hat that has those dips I realize the lines are not going to be straight anymore so from this point I decide to work bottom up and the funniest thing was the base row orhan was perfect stop in a plaza I'm sorry I need a moment there's no space that never happens it they all fit perfectly normally you get to the I purposely did this so that if there was a gap it' be on the back of the Hat wow and it fit perfectly but because the hat is sort of concave and it changes Dimension that didn't happen all the way up the cake but from then on I worked bottom up lining up the draes You Know It's tricky because they're so shiny they're slippery some of them I had to toss aside because once you place it and there's royal icing on it and you pull it off it's foggy and cloudy it doesn't look silver anymore so I had to toss those aside there were some there were some draes that did not make it to the concert tour for the brim I'm going to use these rods that's the Dr I have the most of and I have to ice the brim as well but what was funny is because the brim was mesh if I put too much royal icing it was coming out the bottom almost like a Sie the icing was like going through so I had to be very delicate put on a layer and make sure it wasn't like just bleeding out the bottom now I do realize they're going to change direction because the head is round right so long as they're straight so they started to change direction but I just went with it and as usual I'm working starting at the front right left right left all the way to the back the top of the Hat I decided to use the orzo shaped draes just on that curve cuz they're kind of small and pointy but rounded so there's a line of those and then for the inside of the Hat I wanted to make sure that we could still see that dip so if I use a dra that's big we're kind of going to lose that dip in the Hat so what I did instead was paint a layer of royal icing and then I poured in the tiniest rice shaped draes guys if you have any idea how many draes this took leave your guess below hopefully if I've made it in time here is the footage of me cutting it if you didn't cut it in time when you do it I'm just going to have like crickets do it do it yeah so here it is everyone and um I will see you next week okay orhan this is the best I can do this is why I am not the videographer oh it's crunchy oh the brim this is why I didn't want to cut it ready there's cake\n"