Princess Castle Cake

My daughter turned four this week so I made her a cake for her very first "friend" party. We are keeping it small and simple, a few of her closest friends for an hour. It should be fun. When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted, she told me a princess castle and I was so relieved. A castle is so much easier than a princess. (Last year, I made her a Cinderella cake and it was so hard!)

I am not a pro by any means, but I feel like I am getting better with each cake I make. I have never taken a class, I just go by what I find on the internet and see on shows like Cake Boss and Ace of Cakes. Here is how I did it:

I found some ideas off of Pinterest and kind of made my own version of it. All the cake is from one funfetti cake mix, baked in a 9x13 pan. The four towers are made from ice cream cones (regular on the bottom and sugar cones for the roofs). They are covered in marshmallow fondant (I used this recipe). I also used buttercream frosting for the filling, the "dirty icing" and for the ivy/flower details. The candy is white chocolate Easter M&M's.

 I cut the 9x13 cake into two large squares and two smaller squares (there was a little bit of cake leftover), and then stacked each of them using the buttercream frosting as filling.

I dirty iced each stack, and then covered with pink fondant. I am not a pro and I have no idea how people get their fondant so smooth and even. Mine always looks bad at this point, but I cover up the imperfections later.

 I stacked the small stack on top of the large squares, with some toothpicks for support. I then dirty iced and fondant covered 4 ice cream cones and attached them to the four corners using toothpicks as well.

 Then I dirty iced and covered the sugar cones with purple fondant and then attached to the ice cream cones with a ring of buttercream.

 Using a razor blade, I imprinted the walls and towers with a brick pattern. I then cut out more purple fondant for a drawbridge door and windows and attached them using buttercream.

Now the fun part, I colored buttercream frosting green, yellow and blue and decorated the bottom with piped ivy, flowers, and covered up the imperfections. I also added the M&Ms for a little more color and to cover up the messed up fondant in between the two levels. 

 Finally, I added little paper flags to the tops of the minarets that said "Happy Birthday..."

It took me pretty much all day to make, and that was with my mom's help. I am so glad she is visiting, she helped take care of the kids while I did it and was my assistant, washing things or getting things ready. It would have taken me so much longer if it wasn't for her.

Linking up with:
Family Ever After
Skip to My Lou 
Creations by Kara