A PINK CASTLE BIRTHDAY CAKE

A few months ago a friend asked me if I would make a cake for her granddaughter’s fourth birthday.  I sent along some pictures from a book I've had for ages, hoping that something simple like a rabbit or cat shaped cake would be chosen.  The message came back that the pink fairytale castle was the favourite.  Having never, ever made anything like it before I had to put my thinking cap on!

The cake chosen from the book!

I did a mock up of the design using the cookbook as a guide.  Creating the turrets seemed to be the tricky bit.  There were lots of ideas on the internet suggesting using cardboard tubes covered in fondant icing for the turrets but I rejected that idea.  What little girl wants to cut into a cake and find it’s made of cardboard?

My first idea was to bake the turrets in two rings joined together with foil but decided that might not work if they came apart as the sponge mixture rose.  The next idea was to use small pilchard tins but what to do with all those pilchards?! In the end I opted for joining the sponges together with buttercream.  They were then covered in pink fondant icing which more or less concealed any bumps or wonkiness.

The base was a 15cm madeira cake plus a little mixture used for a smaller one for the top .  The turrets were made using a basic four egg sponge recipe that came with the pack of 2” cake rings. As a precaution I used some of that mixture to make some mini madeleines and in the final design one of those was used for the top turret to display the pink number 4 candle.  

The turret roofs were ice cream cones brushed with warmed apricot jam then sprinkled with pink glimmer sugar.  The base cake was covered in a generous amount of pink buttercream, reserving plenty for fixing decorations to the cake.  The turrets were secured to the base with cocktail sticks and after that it was just a matter of chucking as many decorations as we dared at it!

It was enormous fun to make and took the three of us two hours to decorate!