Here's a little thing I knocked up for a Clandestine Cake Club meet that had a Medieval theme. It tastes lush and looks pretty much like a castle, and that's about as good as I get :D The sort of thing you can make for a young child's birthday cake. You don't want to get them started on mega-awesome cakes too early because they just want something better the next year and unless you're an uber talented cake artist it's going to cost you thousands over their life time! So keep them basic as long as you can with a nice little castle cake.
"No you can't have a life size cake version of *insert current favourite hideous pop sensation boy/girl*! You're having a Castle Cake that some random guy made on his blog and you're going to like it! Now get back up that chimney!"
It got given a buttercream covering because I still haven't got round to covering a cake with that rolled out icing stuff, and I sure as hell wasn't going to start on an awkward shaped cake like this! The cake's pretty much straight forward to make, well, I made it, the only out of the ordinary things you'll need is up to three 8" square cake tins, a ruler, a palette knife, and some black edible paint or gel food colour :)
Ingredients:
- 300g Caster sugar
- 300g Unsalted butter, room temp
- 5 Free range eggs
- 1 tsp Vanilla extract
- 300g Self raising flour
- 2 tsp Baking powder
- 3 TBSP Milk
Filling, covering and decoration:
- 300g Unsalted butter, softened
- 600g Icing sugar, sifted.
- 2 TBSP Milk
- 1 tsp Vanilla extract
- 200g Raspberry jam.
- 100g Thin white chocolate bar, room temp or just above.
Preparation:
- Preheat oven to 180c
- Grease or spray and line up to three 8" square baking tins.
- Weigh your mixing bowl.
- In a bowl, mix together the sugar and butter until creamed.
- Keep mixing and add 1 egg at a time.
- Add the Vanilla Extract.
- Sift the the flour and baking powder, add to the bowl and mix.
- Add the milk and mix.
- The batter should be runny enough to spread a thin layer in each tin, if it looks too thick add a touch more milk.
- Weigh the bowl again to work out how much total batter there is then spread a third of the batter evenly into each square tin, pushing it out to the sides. I had 2 tins and so had to bake 2, then 1.
- Bake for about 25 mins, or until lightly browned, just starting to come away from the tin sides, and a knife/cocktail stick comes out of the centre clean.
- Leave to cool in the tin for 10 mins then tip out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Whilst the sponges are cooling...
- Mix together the butter, milk, icing sugar and vanilla extract for the buttercream, add either more milk or more sugar if necessary. You can either put the buttercream in a piping bag, or just use it straight from the bowl or a plate. A plate is easiest when scooping up a bit at a time with a palette knife for the outer covering.
- Cut back the slight domes of the sponges so that they are a bit flatter.
- Take 2 of the cooled sponges and cut out about a 4" square from the centres. Cut these squares into quarters.
- You now have 1 solid sponge, 2 with the centres cut out, and 8 small squares for the corner towers.
- Spread a tin layer of jam on the solid sponge, then a layer of buttercream.
- Place a hole'd centre sponge on top then repeat the jam and buttercream on this.
- Place the next hole'd sponge on top and repeat the jam and buttercream in the corners, but just buttercream in between the corners.
- Use 2 little sponge squares in each corner sandwiched with jam and buttercream.
- Cover the rest of the bare sponge with buttercream.
- Chill in the fridge for a while until the buttercream has a solid surface but is still soft underneath. It is then easier to smooth with a palette knife. (I didn't do this bit, you can tell lol)
- Chop the white choc into little rectangles and place around the top of the castle. This helps protect the castle from attack and protects your troops, oh yes. I used a bar of Lindt white choc as it was the thinest so it looked to scale-ish on the cake and was easier to cut neatly.
- Place the cake in the fridge until well chilled.
- Make a little door out of brown/chocolate flowerpaste if you want :)
- Now, I had the single choice of one paint brush and black food colour gel to do my very artistic and detailed brick work on the castle. If you cover the cake with rolled icing and have a selection of brushes and food paints, you could do a pretty special job on the brickwork. You can also get those plastic moulds that you press into the icing to look like stone or brickwork.
- Make or buy little flags and stick in the tops of the towers.
- Ta-da!!!! Castle cake!
- Attack, conquer, eat :)
Castles Castles Castles! The soothing tones of Crystal Castles - Baptism
Throw the cake as high as you can and you get Ian van Dahl - Castles in the Sky.
Castles need stone! Stone Roses - I am the Resurrection (live)
Castles need rock! Party rock! Love this literal vid - LMFAO - Party Rock Anthem -Literal MSPaint.
Any excuse for some mad muppetry - I'm Elmo and I know it!
And what ya gonna attack a castle with, why Breeders - Cannonball of course!
Loved these guys 'Safe sex, Designer drugs...' 90s album! aparently they changed their name to Deckard to hide from me :( The awesome Baby Chaos - Hello Victim.
Another! Another!!! :D Baby Chaos - Golden Tooth.
These are the sort of tunes you want blasting out when attacking a castle! Courtesy of Kasabian - Club foot.
...and Fire.
....aaaaand finally, just going to add this. The fantastic Nneka - Heartbeat. A tune that's been reworked by Chase n Status, and is currently being sampled in the C & S produced RIP by Rita Ora (Some saying without being credited)
Stay Stoney people!
