Fairy Castle Cake

For a fairy party, what other cake should be made but a Fairy Castle?  (Thank goodness I didn't have to make a fairy!)

I had a few sources of inspiration for this.  I have two Woman's Weekly children's cake decorating books. One is a re-released vintage one and the other is modern.  It is amazing to see how much has changed. The biggest difference I notice is how the vintage one is all buttercream icing and the modern one is almost exclusively royal icing, which gives a much smoother, more professional looking result.

There's just one hitch: I hate kneading royal icing!  I have started going with a version of my own, also called Fluffy Frosting, using egg whites, a splash of lemon juice, the colouring and lots and lots of icing sugar.  My top tip for cake decorating is always make way more icing than you think you will need. Like, double. You will use it.

The other source of inspiration was a cake from my own childhood, made by my mother for my younger brother's birthday. I remember this vividly because my mother had made it and left it on the counter until the party. I was looking at it and decided that there was a bit of messy icing on the board, so I scooped it away with my finger and ate it.  I then proceeded to "neaten" almost all the icing around the edges of the cake! Once I'd finished the edges, the join between the turrets and the cake looked messy, so I neatened that too. Do you know the funniest part? I don't remember getting into enormous trouble! I am pretty sure I made the cake look awful but maybe my mother was too busy with the party to notice at the time.  Anyway, the episode has stuck in my mind. I must have been about 5 at the time.  Sorry Mum!

So the castle was going to be a cake with upturned ice cream cones. 4 years is the perfect age for this because the four turrets are great candle holders.  I knew I wanted height for the base cake but I wasn't catering for huge numbers of children so I didn't want to make a large slab cake for the base.  I don't have any square cake pans, and I didn't want to create extra crumbs by cutting and building up sections of cake, so I used a round cake tin for the base. I love to see the in-progress photos of other's cakes so here's mine of the cake and the cones without any icing:

You can see the decorating ingredients hanging around, waiting to be used.  I buy a cheap cake mix (yes, the cheapest, no-name cake mix in the store - it is actually really, really good), I used 4 in total, make my own icing and I do spend up on lots of decorations. I also always over-buy because I am never quite sure exactly what I am going to use on the day.  The smarties didn't get used in the end, but they are a great backup and will always be readily eaten at the party, if they don't make it on to the cake.

To get the candles to sit on the turrets, I poked a hole in the bottom of each cone with a knitting needle. Then I iced each cone and sprinkled glitter sprinkles all over it.  I wedged the candle in the top and added more icing if needed.  Then I left them to dry.  I transported them to the party separately and put them on top of the cake just before serving. They are not iced into place.

I used lots of icing around the sides of the main cake, the cakes rose a lot in the oven and I cut them down a little, but there were still lots of gaps to fill.  I didn't want to fill the bottom gap with icing and I was about to cover the space with a ribbon when I realised that the marshmallows would make perfect foundation stones for the castle. So I stuffed the underside gaps with marshmallows and added more to the plate before serving.

I used Toblerone pieces for the castellations, Cadbury Dream Fingers for the door/drawbridge and added sugar flowers and wafer butterflies around the sides.