Edible Craft- How to Make a Castle Cake and Marzipan Roses

Castle Cake

 My daughter is going to be 5 this month and she wanted to celebrate her birthday in her art and craft summer camp at Planet Kids.She wanted a castle cake and the baker refused to make me a 2 kilo castle cake .So to pacify a teary eyed little girl I bravely promised her that her " amma" would make one. I am more of a cookie baker than a cake baker and it was kinda scary as this was a first attempt at a major themed cake and I would not be able to  get one from the bakery if i messed it up! 

We baked it at 6 in the evening . It was an eggless chocolate cake[ recipe from Nita Mehta I often swear that you cant go wrong using her recipes!] We started icing it at 8 [ breaking traditions that say you need a long gap before you ice the cake!]and completed it around midnight.She wanted an all pink one so I had to settle with different shades of pink.My little princess contributed in icing the base and making the butter icing. She wanted to make the marzipan flowers too!
The Edible Roses are made from Marzipan made at home

Marzipan Roses

Marzipan is an useful thing to know how to make as you can use it to make lots of stuff not just flowers and you can use it to decorate all sorts of edible stuff not just cakes.

How to Make Marzipan 

Ingredients

• Nuts :20-25 Almonds or cashew nuts[ A handful]. Cashew nuts are easier as you can save time . For almonds you need to blanch them and peel off the skin.Powder them in a mixer to get a fine dry powder
• 2- 3 tablespoon Cornflour
• 100g icing sugar- sieved to ensure no lumps
• 1-2 drops vanilla essence

Mix all the ingredients with little water to give a dough consistency.The correct consistency is when you knead it no cracks appear and not too wet and should not stick to your fingers.

Color as required.

Marzipan can stay for even months in the freezer without spoiling

How to make Marzipan Roses

Here is the link to how to make Edible Marzipan Roses
Take a pea sized ball of marzipan knead it well and roll it into a long roll about 4 cm. 

Flatten the roll and make a spiral for the center of the rose. 

Take small balls of marzipan and flatten for petals. Attach the Marzipan petals around the central spiral . Marzipan adheres well if of the correct consistency.

Use green marzipan to make some leaves. I have not made any as my daughter was insistent she wanted a purely Pink Cake!

How to make the Castle Cake

Make a rectangular, circular or square shaped cake

Edible Craft Castle Cake

Place cupcakes on the corners for the towers.

If you have extra cake cut a large square piece of cake for the center. I shaped 4 cupcakes into squares for the central tower 

Give a base coating of icing on the cake. Fondant icing gives a very smooth finish but none of us like the taste at home so we always go for butter icing.

Make doors and windows with wafers 

Invert ice cream cones over the towers for the conical roofs.I have 5 cones as my little one is celebrating her fifth birthday.

Make tiny flags from Aluminium foil wrapped around toothpicks.

Castle Cake

Here is the name card made with 3 D glitter and embellished with a homemade paper rose.Here is the tutorial how to make the Paper Rose

Paper Rose Name Card

I am not a professional at this sort of thing and have not gone to any cake decorating classes.I   just posted this to encourage others to try this sort of stuff at home . Have fun!