To build this year's sort-of-castle cake (Last year's castle can be found here.), I used my 8x8 square pans and my 6" circles. It took 3 cake mixes - one for each square, and one for the 2 circles. I know there are lots of people out there who love to make cakes from scratch, but I am not one of them!!
Once the cakes had baked & cooled (I did this the day before), I applied a base layer of frosting. The reasons for this are twofold: 1) it smoothes everything out, and 2) it makes everything look nice & white & clean.
For example, at this corner there was a huge gap, but you can't tell, can you?!
Here, you can't even tell it was 2 layers!!
Now, this much cake is a bit heavy, so there needs to be some support in the middle of it. Keeps the top from crashing through the bottom, so to speak. I traced my circle cake pan on a thick piece of corrugated cardboard & then covered it with aluminum foil.
Once the base layers were assembled, I made a buttercream fondant. It tastes much better than real fondant, but it's not as stiff, so it has to be assembled in pieces on the cake. I don't mind - gives the castle a bit of a rugged look, but it's probably not the best if you wanted a really formal cake. One of these days I'm going to have to post about how to make the frosting!
Once the squares were covered, I put the circles on top & covered them as well.
This is the point at which I was going to add the towers made of rice krispy treats. Turns out that although they were very tasty & colorful (I combined krispys & fruity pebbles)... they can't stand on their own!
So, we have a towerless castle. They do exist!!
All that was left then was to decorate!! I made regular (pink, of course!) frosting for this part and dyed it with food coloring.
Due to a slight miscalculation on my part, I ended up with way more frosting than I should have. So I added flowers on the other sides to girly it up a bit.
Although this was fun, I'm glad her birthday is only once a year!!!
2 comments:
I am glad you explained about the towers! I was wondering!!
Your cakes are amazing! Reading your birthday posts makes me realize/wonder what I have in store for me! I hope my kid's cakes turn out as wonderful as yours do....I may be emailing for advice!!!! :)
~Kristen
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