Castle Cake

I'm a dork, and I want to link Trevor's cake to the Creative Cats Tuesday on Poppies at Play (it's an awesome blog full of creative things to do!), and I don't want anyone who doesn't know me to be forced to read through all that great biz about Trevor's birthday. So below follows my account of the great cake bake :) It took many hours, so plan ahead!

As I said before, I got the strategy for making the cake by combining a few ideas I'd seen around while googling my face off. It turned out looking a little more silly than I was expecting, but hey! It's a frickin castle! it makes up for any silliness :)

First I baked 4 layers of cake using 2 boxed cake mixes. I used an 8" square pan. I mashed the air out and mashed the big puff that happens when you bake a cake right after each layer came out of the oven. I was hoping to minimize the amount of puff I needed to cut off later, and also I was hoping to make the cakes a little more dense so they'd be easier to manage.

After cooling I cut off the tops to make all the edges flat. I kept 3 of the squares their original size, and cut one of them into 4 more squares, THEN cut one of those squares into 4 more squares. See the picture I drew because that's sort of confusing :)

I got my butter cream frosting recipe from a course book for basic cake decorating--I liked the flavor last time I made it. I doubled the recipe to make 6 cups of frosting--it was BARELY enough. And then I had to add milk so it was thin enough to spread without tearing the cake to shreds.

Frosting (makes 6 cups):

2 cups white shortening

2 pounds powdered sugar

2 tablespoons mirange powder (purchased in the cakse aisle)

2 teaspoons butter flavoring (also purchased in the cake aisle)
1/4 cup milk or water

Cream everything but the sugar, then add the sugar in increments until smooth and thck. Add more milk or sugar to make the consistency you want. Add food coloring or store-bought colored frosting to color your frosting how you want. I went gray by adding some black from a tube of premade frosting I found at the store.

I ended up using our handy cutting board covered in foil for a building surface. Next I layered three of the 8" squares on top of each other, frosting in the middle; two of the 4" squares on top of that; one of the 2" squares on top of that. Pretty simple.

Frosted the outside, be sure to be liberal with your frosting at first so you don't tear up your cake. I was having a hard time not getting a "cookies and cream" look, so I stuck the cake in the fridge after I did my best frosting it, for about 45 minutes. Then I was able to add another layer of slightly thinned frosting over the chilled layer without any problems. It smoothed out pretty well.

Next frost 5 waffle cones and coat them with sprinkles (I ran out by the time my 5th cone was done, so they ended up uneven, so be careful). The rims of waffle cones are slanted, so I broke some of the edges off to make them stand up straight. Then I stuck them down on the 4 corners of my 8" layers to make spires. The 5th cone went on the top.

Next I made the drawbridge, moat, and rock stuff. First I added the greenery around the edge of the castle with a star shaped frosting tip. Then I spread blue frosting around the castle and

textured it to look like water. That gave me the frosting base I needed to stick my drawbridge
down. I drew a really basic doorway and stuck to chocolate wafers down. I used Twizzlers Pull'n'Peel and tooth picks for the "chains." (Stick one toothpick INTO the Twizzler end, then shove the rest INTO the cake at the top of the door frame.) The rocks were the fun part. You can buy candy rocks at pretty much any grocery store that carries bulk candy. Simply give them a frosting layer to stick to, and plop them down in the patterns you like. I used pieces of broken up waffle cone to make the roadway.

I added the Rolos and spots of green frosting throughout the rocks to make it look like grass growing up, and I was pretty much done with the castle! I painted on a layer of black frosting to the edge, traced my "happy birthday Trevor!" with a toothpick, and filled it in with red.

I added the candles last--putting 2 at the front of the castle by the bridge like torches!

This turned out to be one of the funnest projects I've done in a long time! It really brought out the kid in me :) I think every 22 year old should get a castle cake :) Everyone try making some sort of awesome cake, and show me how it goes; I want to make some more!