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!
