Princess Castle Cake

So my daughter recently celebrated her third birthday and I foolishly brought her to A.C. Moore to have her pick out the birthday cake she wanted – thinking she’d want the Dora cake pan that Wilton sells. Well, just beneath that section was the Wilton Princess Castle Cake set. To be fair, she did consider to each of the choices in the aisle – but ultimately, she chose the Princess Castle. I looked at the Wilton website and the reviews seemed to say it was easy enough just very time consuming. I started making the fondant 4 weeks in advance and worked on the little pink flowers every night. My husband helped with the yellow dots of royal icing.

I made the cakes a week ahead of time and froze them by double wrapping them in saran wrap. The castle peaks are covered in royal icing and dipped in Wilton’s sparkles (which come in many different colors) – I completed this the week before the party.

The day before the party I frosted and covered both cakes in Fondant and stacked them. Then I had to add the towers and peaks which was difficult to make sure they were secure. I used a LOT of royal icing around the bottoms and the sides. Then i had to get all the flowers to stick on the cake – boy was that a pain – It took a long time to get all the flowers on and then decorate with the green icing to make the leaves. I ended up needing my husband to help me and even then we were up until about 1 pm to finish it.

We were very nervous about moving the cake (the party was not in my home) but it all turned out well – Somehow it made it in one piece. I definitely have a bigger appreciation for what the professionals have to do when delivering these cakes! I’m glad I didn’t go with the idea of assembling most of the cake on site – it never would have worked. It took so long to do it. Here is the cake!

To be fair, you don’t have to cover the cake in fondant – you can just use buttercream, but I like the look of fondant better.

History of Marshmallows

So I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I have been stocking up ideas. I haven’t been baking that many cakes as I tend to be more of a pie/cookie baker. I’m thinking of either reviewing cakes I see at parties or changing the name of this blog to reflect more global baked goods. I’ll keep you posted…lol

Anyway, I came across this article on Facebook and since I’m a big fan of Marshmallow fondant thought it’d be interesting to you all. I was surprised by the fact that this history comes from an actual plant!

Enjoy!
The History of Marshmallows

An unexpected cake

It’s the second month of my fondant cake challenge to make and decorate 1 cake per month and already I’m upping the ante with doing an unexpected cake. With only a week’s notice, I was invited to a baby sprinkle for a friend who is 9 months pregnant. A ‘sprinkle’ is a baby shower for a mom expecting a 2nd child. It’s usually a much smaller party than for the first child and this was very much in that vein. A small group 5-6 moms with their kids. So I volunteered to bring a cake.

I really wanted to do something fun and trendy like a purse shaped cake, but with the short notice I really didn’t have time to make a practice cake and as you know, I’m fairly new at this. I decided to make another present cake with big bows. However, this time I decided to make a square shape since this is supposed to be more challenging to cover than a round cake and I want to learn as much as I can while making these cakes. I wanted the colors to pop and decided on a turquoise and pink color theme. Pink specifically because the mother to be is expecting a girl.

Coloring the fondant turquoise was challenging. Wilton sells a Teal Food Coloring but I was coloring a large amount of fondant for the cake. I also was using my homemade Fondant for the first time. It took a long time and I discovered that using a little Crisco to help knead the color in helped it along. In the end I was very happy with the resulting color- it reminded me of a Tiffany gift box and I think that could be a future cake- a gift box with a classic Tiffany white bow with the famous logo.

I made bow in a vivid pink. To make the bow you need to cut out the loops and shape them a couple of days before to allow them to dry. That’s how they retain their shape. Then you glue them on the covered cake with icing. I added the little pink fondant balls that decorated the base of the cake to finish it off.

Here is the final:

All in all I was happy with how it turned out. I would have liked it to be more level and perfect. I bought a leveler this week to help with my daughter’s birthday cake for this weekend. This next cake is promising to be a doozy.    I’m making it two tiers and using her favorite characters from many different shows. I fear my hands are going to be permanently stained after this week. Can’t wait to tell you how it turns out!