Mummy E got in touch with a very straight forward brief - a castle cake with turrets, and cobblestone-textured walls for the castle exterior. Her boy is a big fan of dragon-slaying knights and they have an awesome collection of toys that could be used for a birthday cake, now all that's needed is a castle.
There are many places to draw inspiration from. Mummy E sent me some examples of what she envisioned for the cake. I also looked to my boys' toy corner and actually found this Melissa & Doug castle that had just the right turret design.
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| Melissa & Doug Castle |
I was going to make a square base and stack it up 3 times, with turret towers. I usually turn to ice cream cones when it comes to building castles but Mummy E didn't want the conical type castle so she suggested using paper towel rolls to construct the height of the turret - excellent idea!
The one important tool in this cake project is the embossing mat for the cobblestone texture. I wanted to buy it online as I was out of town while planning this cake with Mummy E. In the end, it was available at Kitchen Capers in Singapore, they have a good one because it comes in a large sheet. For those of you interested here's the link. Mummy E very kindly bought it and left it with me.
I made the turrets 2 days in advance so it would dry out nicely. It was a bit tricky to make fondant adhere to cardboard but with some careful moulding it was doable.
A lot of grey fondant was used, there was little need for any other colour. But having said that, I applied a technique I learnt at a fondant figurine class - shading!
Here's the castle before I applied shading...
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| Castle Grey |
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| Closer look at the embossed texture |
And here's the castle after shading...
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| Shady Castle |
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| Elijah's Castle |
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| Happy Birthday Elijah! |
