My bosses granddaughter was turning 4. She is in love with anything "princess" - so naturally mimi wanted a princess type cake for her! We decided on a princess castle - which I was dying to try! I have a couple of books that show how to make castle cakes, so after much thought decided to incorporate the two. That way I could use the pieces of the cake I liked and skip the details that I wasn't so crazy about.
This was a multi-process cake! Very simple to decorate once all the pieces were made, but time consuming in the beginning. Time management skills were put to the test!
The main stipulation of the cake was that it had to have pink in it! Every self-respecting princess has pink on a birthday cake! With that in mind, I first made the turrets for the towers. Basically these are sugar cones covered in pink fondant, then trimmed so that the edges were straight and flat. I cut out some tiny pink fondant flowers in light pink and some tiny hearts in a darker pink. I found out later - Wilton sells them in large jars - all I would have had to do was separate them out! Ah well - lessons learned! I did find the white flower centers from Wilton, those were in a jar filled with yellow, pink, white and green flowers. I didn't have a cutter that small, nor could I find one in time. I also filled in with silver dragees. These are difficult to find, however I found that the Decorette Shop in Portland has many different sizes and colors of these for sale.
The towers themselves are a mixture of fondant/gumpaste. I rolled these out very thin and wrapped them around empty toilet paper/paper towel rolls that were covered in plastic wrap and powdered sugar. These took about a week to dry. I did lose one when I was removing it from the "mold" so that the insides could dry - so glad I made extras! I failed to completely smooth the edges on these, so after they were dry I discovered that I could use a dremel on the edges to smooth them down. The windows on the towers were just black fondant I cut in the shape I wanted and then piped with royal icing.
Once the pieces have dried, its time for assembly. The turrets are placed on top of the towers and held in place with a layer of royal icing. I let these dry for a day before I started on the assembly of the cake.
This cake was a yellow butter cake with french vanilla buttercream. The cake itself is an off set stack (the top layer is placed towards the back of the bottom layer instead of the center). I did this so I could make the "balcony" look. After the cake is iced, the fun part starts! The two towers on the top are placed and settled into the cake itself. Using a rope of fondant, I wrapped it around the bases of the towers to help stabilize it. The bottom towers are also placed into the cake, on the sides. I made the doors out of chocolate fondant, used a scoring tool to make them look like panels and a silver dragee for a door knob. The balconies were made from a fondant rope which I cut into squares and then topped with more pink hearts. Borders were piped and voila! One princess cake!
I hear the birthday girl loved the cake - went straight for the pink turrets! This one was one of my favorite cakes to make. My niece saw the pics and told me that she wants this cake - I can't wait to make it for my niece when she turns 4 in December!
