The One That Really Got Me Hooked

My fourth fondant covered cake (and I promise I’ll stop counting them after this, but I’m still stunned by the cockiness and sheer audacity involved in taking on a celebration cake of this magnitude so early in my celebration cake making history)…anyway, my fourth one came about because Barn was so impressed by the cakes I made for Mum’s Pimms party (he is ridiculously easy to impress). He began showing photos to all and sundry; which lead to me being asked if I could make a cake for his niece’s August birthday, based on the tower from the Disney film Tangled.

At first, I almost declined on the grounds of inexperience, but when I realised I was more than a little excited about the prospect of having an excuse to try doing something so extravagant, I agreed. Then I researched how to go about it.

Cobbling together information from around the internet, and adding some tweaks of my own, I came up with a tower support structure made from plumbing parts (new ones, obviously). Petit Man handled the hardware side of things.

The completed tower, pre-cake application: pipe covered with rice krispie treats, then melted white chocolate, and finally fondant decorations.

Next came the building of the roof…a waffle ice-cream cone was slowly transformed with the careful application of fondant.

I fitted a square, triple layer vanilla Madeira cake around the base of the support. This was filled with strawberry flavoured buttercream and covered with fondant.

The figures were a set of plastic ones from the Disney shop, but apart from those and the candles, the whole cake was edible (and palatable…no gumpaste!).

The house at top of the cake was a two layer red velvet cake, filled and frosted with white chocolate and vanilla buttercream, and decorated with fondant.

This was the finished article – adored by the birthday girl and eagerly munched by the party guests. The response to this cake was what started me thinking that maybe, possibly, I just might have some kind of ability in the cake making arena – it certainly got me fully and deeply hooked into cake design and sugar craft. To this day I remain proud of what I created here.