Castle Ilona

Having talked about my cakes to many people at fencing, and pointed them at this website, one of them (Ray Munn) made the mistake of showing the website to his daughter. She took a shine to the Faerie Tale Castle cake, insisting that it was hers, and that was what she was going to have as her birthday cake. At which point he decided that he couldn't possibly disappoint her and he'd have to get me to make a cake for him. So I took the cake books in to fencing one week and we finally settled on this castle cake, after MUCH deliberation!

Anyways, coz it was for Ilona's 5th birthday party, there was really only one choice when it came to the cake colouring for a young girl. The sponge was left as a plain maderia sponge mix, with enough red food colouring to turn it into a bright, Barbie doll, pink. The buttercream icing inside was made up with lots of Strawberry flavour Nesquick, again to turn it a lovely shade of pink, and to give it that wonderfully sickly "starwberry" flavour which kids love so much. Personally I'm not sure I can think of anything that tastes less like strawberries than that, but who am I to judge?

For those of you who keep asking about timings and costs, here's a brief breakdown of how long it took, what I did:

• Monday 18:30-20:30 : Coloured the sugarpaste fondant (ready to roll icing to you & me)
• Tuesday 18:45-22:30 : Mixed cakes & baked, while cooking made up the buttercream icing
• Wednesday 18:30-20:30 : Cut the cakes and made the base mountain. Covered in sugarpaste.
• Friday 19:00-22:30 : Made the castle & covered in sugarpaste. Glued and attached the turrets. Added the grass to the mountain base.
• Saturday 09:30-11:30 : Rolled out the rooves for the turrets and attached them. Made and stuck the flowers to the mountain. Shaded the mountain with icing sugar for the highlights and black dusting powder for the shadows and pathway. Attached the name over the castle doorway.

To be honest, this was one of the quickest cakes I've ever made. It has to be said that I'm getting faster and faster with each cake that's made, and I constantly surprise myself with it... The Enchanted Tree cake took me much more time than this... More than 20 hours all told in fact...
And as for costs, I did this one for £40 all in. Not a bad deal really.... :D

N.B. I've been asked to add (by my wonderful wife Sue) that she feels that for the amount of time and effort that goes into the cakes that I undercharge...

Just for a sense of scale, the cake ended up at almost exactly a foot cubed (yes I know it's on a round base, but it was 12" in diameter, and 12" high, so I needed a 12" cubed box! :P)