Join the Quest

Betty Boop mummy was certain she wanted me to bake her son's birthday cake, so she gave me many weeks of notice for a Camp Lazlo cake. Camp what? I asked. It was another lesson in Cartoon Network characters. Camp Lazlo is a quirky boy scout-like anthropomorphic bunch that play out adventures at a summer camp. Wow, where do I even start? After much consideration, I decided it was a cake project out of my depth. So sadly, I referred her to more capable hands.

Then the birthday boy had a change of mind for the cake and due to the timing, the project was still mine to undertake!

The new cake request: a Deltora Quest cake! Both his mummy and I were stumped. What is Deltora Quest? Well, it's a fantasy cartoon series that follows the characters across the land of Deltora to recover the magical 'Belt of Deltora' and defeat evil forces (think Lord of the Rings  or belt in this case). We discussed over Youtube links of Deltora Quest and figured a boy castle featuring the magical belt was in order. I was all ready for adventure.

Immediately, my previous experience with the princess castle came in handy. I used wafer cones and sugar cones to create the castle. This time everything was grey scale. I wrapped the wafer cones in fondant and used my brickwork pattern to press out the castle wall. The monochrome outside worked well since the main cake is a round rainbow stack sitting on a chocolate base.

The other important element is the 'belt' of Deltora. I used hard candies to create the gems - it's amazing what candies and some colouring can do (emeralds and opals anyone?). FYI. Deltora is spelt using the first letter of each of the gems in the belt: Diamond, Emerald, Lapis Lazuli, Topaz, Opal, Ruby, Amethyst.

Belt of Deltora

I also attempted a figurine of Lief, the main character in the story.

Lief in fondant

As I was building up the castle, I ran into some foundation problem so I called upon my 'structural engineer' (aka the hubby) and he provided the pillar support. To hold the two wafer cones together, a long satay stick was driven into the middle and into the cake.

Building castles in the cake

After toiling many many hours, here's my first boy castle cake...

Happy Birthday Darren

To be honest, I'm not completely happy with it. I know the problematic areas and wish I had done  some things differently - like a bigger base cake and better torting for a flatter surface (I need a cake leveller!) But in all of this, I thank you Mummy E for always being so supportive. 

Castles for Princesses

I've always looked at princess castle cakes and thought to myself - That is just way too difficult! There's simply too many details and construction required to make a home fit for a princess. So you can imagine my trepidation when I was contacted for a princess castle cake.

A mummy who found me online wanted a rainbow cake for her daughter with a princess castle theme. It's a busy week (and month) for me so I told her honestly that I just didn't have the bandwidth to take on the bake job. However, I couldn't bear disappointing anyone especially since she was looking forward to a rainbow cake, so I suggested baking just the round cake with a simple design and she can find her daughter's favourite princess and castle toppers, which I'm sure would look perfect. I was glad she took up the idea coz I knew the toppers would do more justice than my many hours trying to make this work.

As luck would have it, the shops ran out of the castle toppers.

Desperately-seeking-castle mummy contacted me and asked if there was any way at all that I could craft two castles to add to the cake. She managed to get the princess toppers but it wouldn't be the same without the castles. She even sent me resource links and images for ideas on how to craft the castles! I have to admit, my interest was definitely piqued but more importantly, I couldn't possibly leave her stranded! Though it's a crazy period now leading up to Christmas, I found myself looking at youtube  for how to make a castle cake (and there are plenty!)

While looking at how I could do this, I found a website on how to coat the ice cream cones for the castle. The baker had a wonderful description of how she went about building her castle cake, it's a great one - check it out here. I like how she coated the cones with royal icing and rolled it in disco dust! And that's just what I did...

Pink Peaks

The royal icing dried smooth and hard which made it easy to handle for construction. And I love that pink (Americolor Soft Pink). It was a day of just playing with ice cream cones. These inverted cones easily fitted into the fat wafer cones you get with Macdonald's soft-serve ice cream, once that is done, you'll already get the basic idea of a castle tower.

Castle Cones

I made five castles with graduating heights to surround the back of the cake. To do that, I looked around my larder and found some wafer biscuits, had them cut to size and stacked to the height I wanted.

Tall, taller, tallest

I just wish I had more time to embellish the towers, as you can see the cones do look a bit naked at the bottom. I made it up by pipping some 'green grass' and sprinkled some confetti flowers to make it look like flower bushes. Another thing I did was put little flags at the top of the tower cone, it's a small detail that didn't require a lot of work but added to the look visually. Simply cut out some art paper into triangles and stick it down with some fondant.

Tower 1

Latest castle development

I had the cake delivered to the school where little Jmie was going to celebrate her 2nd birthday with her classmates. Her mummy met me to assemble the princesses on the cake for the finishing touch. I was told Aeriel the mermaid princess is her favourite, so naturally she got the main spot on the cake.

Sitting pretty

Happy Birthday Jmie

While I came through for Jmie and mummy with the castles, at the same time, I have them to thank for pushing me to overcome this mental block for castle cakes. I've learnt a lot making this cake and wouldn't mind doing it all over again.