We are throwing a very loosely-conceived castle party for the Mouse in a few weekends. This wickedly cool wizard castle moonbounce will be inflated in our backyard, pb&j sandwiches will be cut into the shapes of crowns, and the birthday cake will be a 3-tiered castle with steeples, windows, and thick double doors. I was unsuccessful in hiring a fire-breathing dragon though. And Merlin himself, that overbooked rascal, is unavailable. Bummer on both counts. Still, should be a hoot. Oh, and that cake: I’m baking it myself. No kidding.
Cookies, brownies, salted caramel chocolate chip bars (oh my freakin’ god – you’ve gotta try these), muffins: no problem. I’ve conquered them all – in the kitchen and, I’d humbly offer my gut as proof, at the table. But I’ve never baked a cake. If I knew you were coming, I’d have, but alas I have not. Today though, I practiced baked a castle cake. Nothing like starting with a project instead of a box of Duncan Hines, right?
I loosely followed this Betty Crocker video, adjusting the color (because there’s no way in hell I’d ever make a pink castle), and 86-ing the top tier. I may go big for the real deal next month but for the test run I dared only 2-stories – a stately but humble chateau, me thinks, for a King not needing to compensate for any other, let’s call them, deficiencies.
Is it perfect? Um, are you blind? No, obviously that cake pictured above is severely flawed. And does the Cake Boss need to look over his shoulder with this hot new talent now on the scene? I’m not even going to dignify that with a pretend answer. But I’m proud of the effort (even prouder when I don’t Google image search “castle cake”).
I prefer to think of the uneven icing as providing that centuries-old, war-ravaged castle look I wasn’t exactly going for in the first place. Accidental authenticity, we’ll call it. And I’ll own that.
