Princess Castle Cake tutorial

How to make a castle cake for your princess!

Our popular castle cake tutorial, for cake decorators at an intermediate 2012 – Summer of Sports on Steroids – BBC estimates more than 2x Football World Cup traffic levels – trefor.net dianabol prices steroids get from, anabolic steroids – rva space | commercial real estate for sale and lease skill level. This tutorial works best for those familiar with cake, buttercream, royal icing, and basic stacking techniques. 

Our website visitors have made some amazing cakes using this tutorial! Check it out!

Equipment

• 12 cake ice cream cones
• 12 waffle ice cream cones
• 5 cardboard tubes 8″ in length
• 6 cardboard tubes 6″ in length
• 1 cardboard tube 4″ in length
• 12″ hexagon cake, 4 inches tall
• 4.5″ square cake, 4 inches tall
• fondant
• Royal icing
• buttercream frosting
• dowels
• cake boards
• sugar cubes
• piping gel
• brick or stone impression mat

Notes

Ready to make this awesome castle cake? Let’s go!

Preparing the turrets.

This cake will have 12 turrets. I use empty paper towel rolls for my cardboard tubes. . The more towers, the more difficult the cake will be. If this is your first castle cake, I recommend starting with a 7 or even 5 tower cake just to get the hang of it! A photo of a 7 tower cake can be found at the end of this tutorial (for a 5 tower cake, simply use only 1 tower on your top tier instead of 3). The towers can be prepared several weeks in advance. Be sure to keep them out of the sun, as the light will fade the colors.

Take a cake cone and dab royal icing around the top of the base. Insert gently into the top of the cardboard tube, making sure that the royal icing makes contact with the cardboard. Wipe away excess icing with your finger. Repeat for all 13 tubes. Hint: Put the cone in the cut side of the tube as it is more likely to be unlevel. Having the level end as the bottom helps your turrets stay upright.

Wrapping the turrets in fondant.

Roll out a sheet of fondant 1/8 – 1/4″ thick and slightly taller than the turret you are preparing to wrap . To help measure, lay the turret on the sheet of fondant, and use a pizza roller to cut the appropriate height.

Give your turret a light coating of royal icing to be the “glue” for the fondant.

Lay the turret back down on the fondant and wrap the fondant carefully around the turret, stretching and adjusting as necessary to compensate for the difference in the width of the cone and the tube.

Use a pizza roller to cut the fondant. You will want to curve your cut slightly to adjust for the size of the cone on top.

Using a very light touch with your hands, press the seam together. Try not to handle excessively to avoid making finger impressions, but if you do, don’t worry, the impression mat will take care of most of those.

Giving a brick or stone impression to the turrets.

Lay your impression mat close to the edge of a table or counter. Lay your turret down on it with the cone side hanging off the edge and the seam side facing down.

With your fingers inside the tube on one side and the cone on the other, pressing down on the impression mat, carefully roll the turret over the mat. Don’t worry if the impression is not a consistent depth across the whole turret.

Roll out a sheet of fondant approximately 6″x6″, and 1/8 – 1/4″ thick.

Lay your waffle cone down on the fondant and carefully roll the cone one full rotation across the fondant, pressing down slightly. This will leave an indentation in the fondant you can use as a cutting guide.

Remove the cone and using the indentations as a guide, cut the fondant with a pizza roller or fondant cutter.

Coat the waffle cone lightly with royal icing, which will be the “glue” for the fondant.

Coat the waffle cone lightly with royal icing, which will be the “glue” for the fondant.

Gently drape the cut fondant around the cone.

Trim any excess fondant from the bottom and seam side with a pizza roller.

Gently press the fondant to the cone and close the seam. Try not to handle too much and leave finger indentations (although if you do, don’t worry! no one will ever notice them when the castle is complete). Repeat for all remaining spires.

Attaching the turrets and spires.

With a piping bag filled with royal icing, pipe a line of icing around the inside of the cake cone.

Pipe a line of icing around the bottom of the waffle cone.

Lining up the seam sides on the spire and the turret, insert the waffle cone into the cake cone and press down firmly to make sure there is contact with the royal icing.

Use your finger to even out the excess icing at the meeting point of the two cones and cover any “bald spots”.

Depending on the size of your ice cream cones, the waffle cone may rest just inside the cake cone, or it may sit on the edge. It doesn’t matter as long as you have a good bond of royal icing.

You can embellish the towers many different ways. I’ve chosen to give all these a tip 4 bead border around the base of the waffle cone. Black fondant squares around the side look like windows, and 2 of my towers will have a pink tip 103 ruffle garland with royal icing. All are topped with a gold dragee attached with royal icing. I do NOT recommend using buttercream for tower decorations, because you will be handling them and it is very easy to smear. Don’t ask me how I know. 🙂

Cut out semi-circular “notches” from the corners of both the cakes. The larger cake is placed on the board it will be presented on. The smaller cake is on a cake board — do not cut the board!

Square cake with notches

Impression mat

Crumb-coat both cakes, then ice with buttercream. I prefer buttercream to fondant because it gives you sharper edges and takes the impression mat better. When the icing has crusted, use your impression mat around the sides by pressing firmly but gently. If the impression mat is pulling the icing off the cake, the icing is not crusted yet!

Take the 4.5″ square cake pan and press it in the middle of the hexagon pan (after the icing has crusted). This will leave you an impression of where your cake will sit (I have highlighted it in green in the picture). Dowel once in the center, and in each corner, about half an inch in from the edge.

*IMPORTANT STEP! Before you place the smaller cake on top of the larger, I highly recommend punching a hole in the board in each notched out corner, close to the cake (I use a phillips screwdriver). This is where you are going to put dowels that will support your towers, but you CANNOT hammer the dowels through after you stack the cakes or you will destroy the cakes. Don’t ask me how I know 🙂

Place the smaller cake on top of the larger one. Note the holes in the corners of the cake board.

Adding the towers

Using sharpened dowels, gently push and twist the dowel through the pre-made hole in the board. Once you have pushed the dowel to the bottom cake board, slide the tower over it.

Repeat for all 4 turrets. This is where 4 of your 8″ turrets will go. The other one will go on top later. *Make sure all your seams are facing the back. I turn mine to the back and slightly inside.

Your six 6″ towers will go around the hexagon cake. Pipe a bead of royal icing around the bottom of the tower.

With the seam facing the back, press the tower into a notch, pressing firmly against the cake and against the bottom board.

Repeat for all six hexagon towers. If you have messed up spots, and gaps in between the cake and towers (like I do), it is no big deal. Go in and clean those up by piping buttercream icing in the gaps. I like a tip 7 or 8 for the job.

Top tower

For your top tower — take your remaining tower and press gently into the icing on the top tier, then remove.

Take two dowels placed near the outer edge of the circle indentation and hammer them through to the bottom board. *IMPORTANT – these dowels must be tall enough to touch the cake cone inside the tower and actually bear the weight of the tower. You’ve probably noticed by now that these suckers are heavy, and if the dowels don’t support its weight, it will sink right down into the cake.

I am placing my last (the shortest) tower on top of the hexagon cake on the left side. I will repeat the steps above for the top tower. *IMPORTANT – I do not recommend traveling with these two towers in place — do not put them on until the cake is in its final destination.

Final Castle

That’s it! The hard part is done! Now all you have to do is clean up any boo-boos in the icing, embellish your castle, and “landscape” your board! I have placed sugar cubes along the edges of both tiers. For the archway in the center, I simply cut out a piece of black fondant and used buttercream frosting to glue it to the cake. This cake is for a “Princess” birthday party for my niece, so I have purchased a Disney Princess deco-pak. I am using a small piece of white fondant with cobblestone impression for the walkway. Green buttercream with the grass tip surrounds the castle, and the ponds are made by first laying down a piece of blue fondant (leftover from the spires) and then spooning blue tinted piping gel on top. The blue tinted piping gel really gives a *wow* factor.

My biggest piece of advice for the castle cake is this: Don’t sweat the mistakes. They will happen, and not everything will be perfect. It doesn’t have to be. This is a dream cake for any little “princess”, one she will remember for the rest of her life!

Tower fondant Castle Cake

Another 7-tower castle, this one in fondant. Note that the towers are missing the cake cone, making them appear “skinny”. The towers and cake have been imprinted with the cobblestone impression mat. I was not happy with the way the fondant on the cake resisted the impression. However, this cake has many special details. Notice the doorknob and hinges on the door. Brickwork dusted with pearl dust surrounds the door and all borders and windows. Fondant lace surrounds the bottom of each spire, and the spires have been heavily dusted with disco dust.

Tower Castle Cake

Here’s a castle with 7 towers. It has pink spires, blue swags around every turret, and gold fondant flags on toothpicks on top instead of dragees. The door is brown fondant pressed into a wood grain impression mat. Flowers and vines also climb the castle walls and towers. Pink royal icing hearts have been piped onto the sugar cubes and then dusted with disco dust. It is a 9″ square and 6″ round.