I'm here with a picture as promised. I must premise these pictures with a word about this cake.
It was not a culinary delight. While not exactly bad, it was only a doctored-up cake mix cake. I would much rather have enjoyed any number of my scratch cakes. After all, I am a cake snob. But, most of my favorite cakes are fairly moist and I was afraid that the weight of the layers would smash them like a pancake. Knowing the work that I had to do to decorate it, I wasn't going to waste it with yummy cake (after all, my priority was the castle!). Also knowing the amount of frosting necessary for a cake like this, I knew it didn't matter what kind of cake was underneath. The kids didn't care anyway.
Decorating this cake was also not as easy as I imagined, and thus, it is not as perfect as I would like. In "my youth," prior to having four children, I was much more of a perfectionist and no one would have seen this cake (except the garbage can). In my perfectionist days, I would never have adorned a cake with Valentine M&Ms or plastic princesses either. But my standards are lower now that my time is shorter. Besides, Peach told me no less than one hundred times how beautiful it was and that she loved me, loved me, loved me. So, it was fine.
A few tips if you would like to create a princess castle (or a dragon castle for young boys):
❍ Use a firm cake. Technically, for this cake, I should have used supports inside the bottom two layers, but I did not have them, nor the time to create them, so I used firm cake.
❍ For the construction of this cake, I used two 9-inch squares (with the corners cut off) and one 8-inch round. If you want to feed more people (this one would easily feed 20 people) use another round and make your turrets taller to balance it.
❍ It takes awhile to frost those ice cream cones (cake cones are hidden beneath the frosting under the "turrets). Frost them with a crumb coat, put them in place and then frost them again. Then cover them with "vines and roses" and no one will notice that they are imperfect.
❍ Don't use white frosting -- I never seem to learn that it's very difficult to cover chocolate cake with white frosting.
❍ If you run out of disposable decorator bags do not use ziploc bags; you'll be sorry.
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7 comments:
I think it is GORGEOUS!!! It looks perfectly princessy!
That cake is SO CUTE!!!
I might have to figure out a way to make a "knight's castle" cake for Little Brother, I like this so much.
i am thoroughly impressed, (not that i expected any less..)
Thanks, friends. You are too kind.
Wow Barbara - unbelievable!!! You are so talented. Ella has been begging for a princess cake this year since last years party, so I might have to attempt something like this, although my icing skills are lacking to say the least!
Just gorgeous. Faith is one lucky little lady!
Barbara, she is precious! And what a beautiful cake.
I too used to make elaborate cakes for my children's birthdays. By the time my 3rd son turned three, I sunk to cutting a picture off the cover of a coloring book and pressing it on the top of the cake. I used purchased icing in tubes to decorate the rest.
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