A castle cake for a little princess

This weekend was my granddaughter's fifth birthday party. The party theme was, of course, a princess party and my granddaughter was, of course, a princess, complete with a tiara. Pronounced "ti-ah-ra" by our little princess. The one thing she needed was her own castle and it was up to me to produce one for her. This fully edible one (except for the flags) is made with cake, butter cream frosting and fondant.

The white cake was an old standby recipe made with two 12" layers, two 8" layers and turrets made from cake cooked in cans and fondant formed into round pillars. The turrets get their pointed roofs from ice cream cones covered with frosting. I was thinking about making the turrets out of something like paper towel rolls but I finally decided to make it all edible. I used the tins from empty Republic of Tea cans and they were the perfect size.

The "stone" was painted on food coloring, using a paint brush and it took approximately 5 cake recipes to make the cake and four recipes of butter cream. All in all it took about 10 hours to decorate, because I had not used fondant before, except on a limited basis.

The decorations and flowers are made from butter cream, piped on using a decorating bag.

The result: Everyone loved the cake and the little princess really loved it. I don't think people like a fondant cake quite as well as a butter cream one, and I do think the fondant was harder to work with, but I think with time and experience, I could improve on it. Overall, I think it was a big success.

Amazingly, the little princess blew out the candles in one try. Of course, all her wishes came true.