Days 5 and 6 of Making a Castle Cake....Finished!!

Wow has it been a long week. Yesterday was spent baking and frosting with the ganache. I absolutely love that stuff. The way it sets up it is pretty hard to get the edges so that they are not smooth and straight. I used 2 smoothers today to put the fondant on and got such smooth and square edges. It was a breeze. Well until I started putting the decorations on. The edges aren't so square any more lol. But this is a picture of the finished cake. 

I think it is pretty cute. Backpack is our favorite lol. For Sophie I made her own special cake. I used a 10" Dora doll and made the skirt of her dress out of a yellow cake. I died layers of the cake batter with food coloring and made her  a rainbow cake. She is going to love it. 

My next project is going to be homemade spaghetti sauce with meatballs for my Grandson Tristan at the end of this month. His birthday is the 30th so he is having a Halloween themed party this year. The spaghetti is to be "worms" and the sauce "blood" and the meatballs "eyes". I don't think I will ever look at my sauce the same lol.

Day 4 of Making a Castle Cake

Well today we made the ganache. All I can say is OH MY GOODNESS. The white chocolate is to die for! And easy. Wow was this easy. The recipe is 2 parts chocolate to 1 part heavy whipping cream. Melt both together in 2 min spurts in the microwave until chocolate is almost melted then shorter times until completely melted. Mix well. Let sit overnight to set. I stirred periodically to make sure it was mixing and melting. Oh man is this stuff good. I used Hershey milk and white chips. They are not "greasy" like most chips you buy. I was going to get pictures but Dave's diabetes started acting up. And it really isn't that thrilling just looks like a bowl full of chocolate lol. 


Once that was finished I started on the tower roof. I bought sugar cones and wrapped them in a thin layer of pink fondant. Being thin it shows the pattern on the cone and makes the roof look textured. I'm not sure if you can see that in the pictures or not.

I guess you kinda can see the texture on the roof. But again I just wet the edge of the tower and sat the roof on top. You have to really be careful with the water it doesn't take much to totally break the fondant down. But this stuff is cool. My son keeps saying I can't believe you can do all of this with frosting lol. We have been having a great time doing this. But here is a picture of all 6 towers finished. 

The towers have been drying since Sunday, so for 3 days now with the paper towel roll and parchment paper still inside. They are drying quite well. I removed the roll and paper before adding the roofs. Now I just hope they don't fall and break or anything. I will probably cry lol. Tareh came in today and went to pick one up just after I made it and it wasn't dry. I think I scared her half to death when I squealed "oh don't touch it"! lol And needless to say I love you guys but the kids are all banned until after the party. I can just see Bryson coming in a grabbing a tower to munch on as he is running through the house. 

Day 3 of Making a Castle Cake

Ok so last night I said we would be doing the towers. Well we had a change of plans. Instead I made Boots, Map and Backpack. I have never molded anything out of clay much less frosting. But I do have to say I believe they turned out very well. I really did not know I had it in me. Backpack is our favorite. Now Backpack carries Map in his side pocket, so I had to be as true to the cartoon as possible. Here is the starting process. 

I also made a blue flower with the number 3 in green to display on the cake. Here are a few pictures of the whole process today. All in all after about 5 hours I am done for the day. Considering Boots fell on his head about 100 times today and my eyes are spent, I don't think we did bad at all. I am happy with the results so far.

Now these guys are 100% fondant. It is amazing what you can do with this stuff. I didn't use any sculpting tools. Just the good old fingers and a toothpick. Boots legs are drying and I will add those once we get him sat on the cake. Can you see Map in the side pocket? Too cute. For the eyes I rolled white fondant into a small ball and slightly pushed it down. Then put some blue food coloring on the end of a toothpick and poked at the eye. For Backpacks mouth I used a toothpick and formed a half smile. It was all pretty easy. No cutting of any kind. I just simply rolled in my fingers or hands and smoothed with the warmth of my fingertips. Here are the final pictures of today's work.

Now I have gone back through with a toothpick and cleaned up all of the rough edges. Like around boots chin, and backpack's mouth and eyes. But these pictures give you an idea of what we have. We also made the pink bricks to go around the top edges of the castle but I forgot to ask Dave to take those pictures. We will be doing the ganache and the roof for the towers tomorrow. So far we have been having alot of fun together doing this. My son has also been chiming in. He offered help at one point when my hands were not doing so well. All in all this has been a great learning experience. 

Making A Castle Cake For My Grandaughter Sophie's 3rd Birthday

Ok so I know I started this blog a while ago and I have not kept up with it at all. Now this all begins with my grandson Keegan. My daughter Ashlei bought him a fondant birthday cake. It was Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse. Super cute! And not to mention He LOVED it! Well I casually mentioned to my daughter Tareh "I wonder if I could do something like that". Open mouth insert foot. Guess what I got myself into. So for the last 2 weeks I have been practicing. The first weekend I had my youngest 2 grandkids here. Bryson loves fondant. He was too cute coming out every 2 minutes with his little hand up saying Mo Mo. Sophie is thrilled Grama is making her cake. Every time she comes in and see's cake on the counter she says "grama you makin my cake for my birthday". It is too cute. And she is telling everyone she see's. I have spent countless hours on the web searching recipes and countless hours at home practicing. I am making marshmallow fondant. The recipe is here. After trial and error and under the advise of one of the blogs I read I made some changes. I do not put the whole bag of powdered sugar in. Instead I grease the tar out of my counter and hands. The I put about 1/4 of the bag of powdered sugar onto the counter. Once the marshmallows are melted I pour it on top of the sugar and start kneeding. Boy do my hands get sticky. But not to fear. After adding about a cup of sugar at a time just until the marshmallows no longer just take the sugar and it is like playdough i just rub my hands and it comes off. I tried buttercream frosting. It is really tasty and we have really liked it. But I am thinking Ganache will work better from everything I have read. So devils food cake with white chocolate ganache as the bottom layer. Yellow cake with milk chocolate ganache as the top layer. Ganache is a frosting that hardens quite well and should help with the smoothness and in getting sharp edges. Or so I have read. Well yesterday the journey to the end began. The party is this Saturday the 13th. No turning back now. The biggest task was trying to figure out how to do the towers. We tried swiss cake rolls last weekend. They worked pretty good, they were just too top heavy to really stand up. The grandkids really liked eating them though. So countless more hours on the web searching. I finally found a blog. She used paper towel rolls with waxed paper as her mold. Yeah I think that could work. These are mine on day 1.  I wrapped parchment paper around the tubes and then wrapped the fondant around. Securing the seams by wetting one side with a little water on my finder and smoothing it down. Now to let it dry for the next 6 days. The pink braid will be Dora's crown. She wants Dora's princess and for the life of me we could not find a princess doll. So we will make our own. 

Well I dragged my son to Hobby Lobby with me. We found a 12" cake pan, the fondant smoother, flower cookie cutters and wooden dowels. On to day 2. I colored the fondant using food coloring. I actually got some pretty colors. I plan on doing Pink roofs for the towers. Green vines with blue and purple rose buds. Pink windows lined in blue. My towers are starting to dry nicely I think I am going to start decorating. I would rather do it while the paper towel roles are still inside to help the towers keep from crumbling. This is my hope any way. 

So have never made fondant flowers. Or any flower from frosting. But I really don't think I did half bad. I used a rolling method for the rose buds. Instead of buying a fondant roller for this, I used a piece of Pex piping. That is the blue roller piece to the left. It worked perfectly for this small task. I took a small piece of fondant and rolled it to about 1/8". Then I cut it into strips about 1/2 wide. Then rolled it making sure the first roll is pretty tight to make the center of the rose. Then I layed it on it's side and used a small sharp kitchen knife to cut one end off and make the bud flat to lay against the tower. 

    Next the other style flowers. They really aren't a specific type just a fun flower. I'm not really sure where I am going to put them. Maybe around the door. These are also going to be blue and purple. Those are the colors that Sophie picked for the flowers. I bought a cookie cutter set at hobby lobby with 3 sizes. I am using the smallest size for these flowers.

                                                          

Once I got them cut out, I used a toothpick and put lines in the center of each petal. Then I rolled a small ball of purple fondant and dipped it slightly in water. The first flower I did this too I used too much water and ruined the flower. Once the ball is wet I placed it in the center of the flower. Now to shape the flowers instead of buying a fondant shaper I used tin foil. 1 thin piece folded in half then creased down the middle. Once I layed the flower onto the tin foil, I pressed lightly on each side of the flower to lift it. Then I layed it on the table still inside the v'd foil to dry.

I also made them in purple with blue centers. About 10 in each color. They are already starting to harden very well. I am actually having fun at this point. So now onto the towers. I am doing green vines with the rose buds placed along them. Pink windows with a blue edging. They actually turned out really nice. For the vines I just rolled green fondant into a thin line. Then using water on my fingers got the vine wet and placed it onto the tower. Then using my finger and water wet the back of the rose bud and placed it onto the tower. Again being careful not to get them too wet. Here is a picture of just the vine and rose buds.

This is both of the tall towers with the windows added. After the picture I added the blue trim. Also there is a pink heart just under to the side of the window that you can't really see.

Now I took a minute and rolled the blue fondant into a thin line to make her name. I really stink at using any kind of writing gel. So I think this worked out perfectly.

 Pretty cute so far. Now we are having fun doing this. My boyfriend is fantastic. He gives me helpful hints also and loves watching the progress. He made the roller for me and is taking the pictures. 


Here is the finished product. There will be 6 towers. Hopefully any way. I am praying that when I take the tubes out of the middle on Wednesday to allow them to finish drying that they don't "deflate" or crumble or something. And then when I put the cake together they stand tall. But I think they are too cute. 

I plan on using sugar cones covered with pink fondant for the roof of each tower. That is on tomorrow's agenda.