Castle Birthday Cake

This is a cake I made last year which I thought I would share. My niece loves her disney princesses at the moment so I thought I would try a princess castle cake. I took some inspiration from the book 50 easy party cakes by Debbie Brown. She used swiss rolls as cake towers. I liked this idea but I wanted to actually bake a full cake so I decided to take the swiss roll idea and place it on top of a cake I had made and iced myself.

Madeira cake recipe (10 inch)
350g butter
350g caster sugar
6 medium eggs
350g self raising flour
175g plain flour
lemon juice and zest

I lined a 10 inch tin with grease proof paper, using a bit of spray oil to help the paper stick to the tin. I mixed together the butter and sugar using a new electric handheld mixer. I have never used an electric mixer but I would recommend it as it really helps speed up the process and creates a light fluffy mix. I added the eggs one at a time continuing to mix. Once combined I folded in the flour with a metal spoon, mixed in the lemon and baked at 160 °C for 1 hour 20 minutes. I covered the cake with foil for the last 20 minutes of cooking.

Next was the butter icing. 

Butter icing
125g butter
400g icing sugar
3 tbs milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

I mixed the butter up with the electric mixer until it became pale and smooth and then added the milk, vanilla before gradually adding the icing sugar while continuing to mix.

I split the cake in two and added a layer of strawberry jam and a layer of butter icing before sandwiching them back together. I then covered the whole cake in a layer of butter icing and popped it in the fridge.

You might not be able to get the butter icing completely smooth, but after chilling in the fridge you can use a palette knife dipped in hot water to help smooth any lumps. I was worried about covering the cake with the icing thinking it would be really difficult but it wasn't too bad. I wish I had got the cake a bit more level.

I also wanted to try and make my first fondant person so I tried making a little princess to look like my niece. She has gorgeous red hair. It was a little fiddly, the eyes were so difficult! For a first try I think it is ok.

With all that done all that was left was to decorate the cake and the swiss rolls. I found covering the rolls in fondant surprisingly tricky. I used a big roll for the centre tower and mini rolls for the two side towers. As the cake was not completely level it was difficult to get the towers to stand up straight. 

The crown candles are from hobby craft

If I did it again I think I would do a few things differently but for a for a first try I think it is ok. I think next time I need to work a bit on the finishing touches. The two small towers didn't survive the car trip and needed to fixed on arrival. I think I need some sort of dowelling if I attempted this again.

Thanks for reading x