Twins Princess Castle Cake – A Decorating Tutorial

Here is another one of my castle cakes and I call this one twins princess castle cake. It was made for a set of twin girls for their first birthday. The design and colors were made to match that of the image shared by my customer.

This was the design my customer referred to. The castle itself was a ready made topper. In fact, this image itself was taken from an online store selling the castle topper. 

Based on the image, I figured out that the cake was decorated with buttercream. However, since my customer wanted fondant, I recreated it as close as possible to the image and colors provided. And the image also shows the cake being airbrushed. My airbrushing skills are nowhere near good, so I told her I can only make a single toned color and my customer was OK with it. She also wanted the castle to be made out of cake, so that was how I made it for her.

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Here is how I made the Twins Princess Castle Cake

Main supplies for the princess castle cake:

• Cake – the cake itself measured 10 inches by 6 inches rectangle. I baked it in two layers. The overall height of the cake was 4 inches. I also baked another 8 inches by 8 inches square cake for the castle. I used my marble cake recipe for the cake.
• Buttercream – I used buttercream to fill and crumb coat the cake.
• Fondant – I used store-bought one for this project and tinted it to make the colors requested by my customer. 
• Gum paste – I used gum paste (tinted in red) for all the wordings on the cake. 
• Cardboard – I used cardboard to help form the castle towers.
• Cutters – The main ones used were the 5 petal flower cutter in a few different sizes and heart plunger cutter.
• Brick and woodgrain impression mats – I used these for the stairway and the castle door. 
• Star piping tips – I used this tip to make the fencing plants at the back of the castle as well as on the sides and front of the cake. 
• Extruder tool – I used the extruder for all the border work on the cake, including the castle and the tiara. 
• Tappit alphabet cutter – I used this for the birthday girls’ names. I also used the same for the ‘happy birthday’ wording. 
• Shortening and fondant glue – I used these interchangeably, using the glue for heavier items and shortening for lighter ones.
• Food coloring

Full view of the princess castle cake

Assembling the cake:

Baking the cake

• Once the cakes were baked and cooled, I leveled them. For the base tier, I place one rectangle layer on my cake board. I filled it with buttercream and placed the second layer on top. I then carved the stairway and the front garden. For the bottom 3 steps of the stairway, I used the cake that was carved out. I mixed some buttercream to it and used it to form the steps. And then I crumb coated the whole cake.

Making the castle cake topper

• Next was the castle. I measured the size I wanted the princess castle to be and cut 2 same-sized pieces from my square cake. I sandwiched both with buttercream to form the base of the castle. For the smaller second tier of the castle, again, I cut 2 pieces of small squares and sandwiched them with buttercream. I then crumb coated both separately and covered them in pink. For the base, I cut 5 pieces of pink fondant squares. I drew the blocks line with my needle tool and attached it to the 4 sides and top of the cake. Then, using my extruder tool, I piped out a long thin roll of dark pink strip. And I attached it all round the edges (with shortening). I did the same for the top tier but did not add any rolled fondant at the edges. 
• As for the towers, I made 4 cardboard rolls in the same size as the towers in the image. And then, I rolled my pink fondant, cut it into 4 rectangles, and wrapped each around every cardboard roll. I used water to attach both ends of the rectangles and let them dry. Once dried, I slowly removed the cardboard, leaving only the fondant towers. I did the same for the short tower on top of the princess castle. For the pointed roofs, I cut out circles using my circle cutter and sliced each circle into half. I rolled each half circle piece to form a cone and ‘glued’ the joints with some glue.

Close up of the castle cake topper on the princess castle cake

Making the tiara

• Next was the tiara. I drew the template on a piece of paper and then used the template to cut out my fondant. I used my heart and flower plunger cutters to decorate it. And then, I shaped the tiara by wrapping it around a glass bottle I had at home. I had to choose a bottle with a diameter not larger than the bottom tier of the princess castle and not smaller than the top tier of the castle in order for the tiara to fit well on the castle). I place the bottle lying horizontally for the tiara to dry and set. Once set, I removed my tiara from the bottle and used my extruder tool to pipe out long thin roll of fondant and attached it to the top of the tiara with glue.

The rest of the deco on the cake

• For the cake, I covered the sides in blue and the top with green. I cut out leaves and plants using dark green fondant and used my flower plunger cutters for the red flowers. 
• For the 3D flowers with the “happy birthday’ wording, each flower was attached to a toothpick. This is so that I could easily poke them into the cake.
• The two roses at each side of the steps were formed by hand. 
• For the alphabets, I used Tappit letter cutters. I cut them out of gum paste tinted in red. For the steps, I covered it in white. I used my needle tool to draw the lines of the bricks. And then I hand-painted the lines with purple food coloring. 
• Once the base cake was done, I carefully placed the base tier of the castle on the cake. I placed the princess castle on a cardboard and had bubble straws to support its weight underneath.  And then the rest of the castle tier went on before I attached the towers and roofs to the castle with glue. Next, I added all the doors and windows.
• Finally, I placed the tiara on the cake (used glue to keep it in place).

And that my twins princess castle cake.

A pretty in pink princess castle cake

Happy Decorating 🙂