Princess Castle Cake Part III

 

 My daughter baked the cakes earlier in the day to speed things along, since I work a full time job. She made the bottom layers chocolate and the top layers yellow cake to appeal to everyone's tastes. We put the cake on  a square cake board since our original idea was to have Disney Princesses around the base of the cake.  




I added dowels in the center of the cake to prepare for adding the top tier. This was my first tier cake, although it was intimidating, I didn't have a problem. I have not mastered the art of icing a cake so don't look too closely. I knew that all of the turrets were going to hide most of the cake so I wasn't being too particular.





I shortened the dowels of the turrets going in the top tier. Trying to figure out what to cut the dowels with without ruining the decorated turrets became a concern, until my son-in-law had a brilliant idea. We used a tool intended for trimming dogs' nails! Perfect! Of course, it was thoroughly washed and cleaned before we used it.





As each turret was ready to be placed on the cake, the roof was glued to it using melted candy melts.  I also added melted candy melts to the bottom of the turret to help secure it to the cake. I suggest placing the smaller turret first, then the next taller one, and then finally the tallest one since the top of the turrets stick out further than the bottom part. I would also attach the forget-me-not flowers to the turret windows as you place each turret, since it can be a tight squeeze getting to some of them. (I discovered this the hard way.) I piped green butter-cream icing onto the window ledges to attach the flowers.




After the first set of turrets was on the top tier, I piped green butter-cream icing around the edge and inserted the flowers.






Then I placed the A shaped roof and the turrets on the bottom tier. The A shaped roof didn't quite fit on the ledge of the bottom tier. If I had realized that before hand, I would have place the top tier a little off center to make room for that roof. I added extra icing on the back of the A-roof to help anchor it to the top tier. You can see that the edges of the A-roof are hanging a little over the edges. I added windows to this tier, fastening flowers with green butter-cream icing.  I also piped the green icing and added the flowers to the edge of this tier.

I noticed that the bottom layer cakes must have not been high enough because when it came time to place the door below the A-roof, the door and the roof were touching.

I fastened the last of the turrets to the cake board with melted candy melts and added the last of the windows. We had to be careful in placement of the windows so that the pointed backing wouldn't push into the dowels that were holding the turrets in the cake. Then the final trimming of the green icing and flowers all around the door, the window ledges and around the bottom of the castle. I piped a touch of white icing to the tops of the turrets to give them a more finished look.

Princess Castle Cake

 Ta-dah! When we were finished my daughter changed her mind about using the princesses around the cake. Sophia was so enthralled with her Princess Castle Cake that she didn't even notice that there were no princesses there!

Sophia's Princess Castle Cake

Princess Cake Part II

Both of my daughters decided to help with this next step...preparing the turrets. One of the most troubling parts of this castle were the directions to attach plastic dowel rods to the turrets with candy melts. Information online from others who made this cake said that the turrets were not very stable. Others said that the plastic dowel rods displaced so much cake when inserted that it made the cake bulge on the sides. Yikes! Some said that they drilled holes into the bottoms of the turrets to insert the plastic dowel rods rather than gluing with candy melts. I decided to drill holes in the bottom of the turrets and insert wooden dowels which are much smaller. I drilled the holes very slowly and did get scared when I heard a cracking sound from one or two as I drilled.  I inserted the wooden dowel rods into the turrets several inches and then used melted candy melts to stabilize the dowels. 

The Wilton directions say to use butter cream frosting to decorate them, but some others online suggested using royal icing. I liked that idea because it allowed me to decorate and ice the turrets ahead of time and not leave that for the day of assembly. I tinted the royal icing blue to please our little Miss Sophia. I iced the turret roofs then quickly handed them to my daughters to sprinkle with clear Cake Sparkles. It was tricky business trying to hold onto the turret roofs without touching the icing at the same time trying to make the icing look smooth and nice. Then I piped blue royal icing around the windows on the turrets and the window and door pieces while my two daughters sprinkled the Cake Sparkles on them.

At the end of that evening we thought it wasn't too bad, the worst part being the icing of the roofs without having anything to grasp. By the time we were finished we all had blue icing all over our hands!

Be sure to see Princess Cake Part III to see the assembly tips and the finished cake!

Princess Castle Cake Part I

It all began when my daughter was planning a princess party for her three-year old daughter. She spotted the Wilton Castle Cake Set online and once she showed it to Sophia, she had to have it. Of course, it must be in blue which is her favorite color. Although the cake looked very intimidating, I agreed to make the cake with her help. Here is the link to the Wilton Castle Cake Set. I purchased mine at Hobby Lobby using a coupon, but you can also find it at Michael's and Walmart.

I read and reread the directions which I really didn't think gave enough detail. I also photocopied and enlarged the directions to make reading easier. I did several internet searches for helpful hints from others who made the cake. I was trying to reduce the anxiety I was feeling from undertaking such a huge endeavor.

My daughter and I decided to work on this in several different steps over the course of a few days. The first night we cut out over 350 forget-me-not flowers. The following evening we put the centers in the flowers using royal icing. Having help, this task went fairly fast.

The next time my daughters and I got together it was time to decorate the turrets and the towers. I will discuss this in Part II.