3D 1
Defend The Kingdom
by Amanda Kennedy · submitted Aug 1, 2009 · 2009 contest
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Description
This cake was a joint project by Amanda Kennedy and Christine Bello. Both the beach ball and the castle were made from lemon poundcake, with buttercream frosting on the castle and canned frosting on the beachball.
For the beachball, we had quite a time trying to figure out how to make a round cake, especially when we went to Michael's and they were sold out of round cake pans. Neither of us were keen on trying to carve a ball, so we decided to use a mixing bowl with a separate ceramic bowl in the center to help the cake bake evenly and still have an indentation in the middle. On our first try, we were a little too eager to see how our plan worked and we ended up with lots of pieces of poundcake. (That ended up being our sandpail, anyway.) We decided to try again, but this time we let the cake cool completely before removing it from the mixing bowl. Success! Seeing the empty space the two cake halves would have, our only choice was to fill it with donut holes. There you have it-a cake filled with donuts. It's an obvious choice, really. We used canned frosting because it was stickier and spreads thinner. To create the shiny plastic ballness of a shiny plastic ball, we covered it in Fruit By the Foot. (blue raspberry and strawberry...there was supposed to be an orange flavor, but the variety box lacked in said variety.)The ball accoutrements were made with white gum paste. The end of the ball.
Now, the damn castle. It should be said, we thought the ball would be the hard part. But it turns out, you fill a cake with donuts and everything comes up Millhouse. After painkstakingly carving the layers of poundcake into the perfect castle shape, we thought we'd be able to just smack some buttercream on, sprinkle some brown sugar on it, and we'd be magically transported to the beach. Nope. Our stupid tourrets kept falling off, the buttercream was being tempermental, and it took 3 hours to get the buttercream perfect. And then the "sand" wouldn't stick. We made a mixture of light brown sugar, dark brown sugar, and granulated white sugar to replicate sand. Gravity was not our friend. We had to repeatedly pack the sugar on and it was drying way too quickly. In the end, Christine ended up taking it home with her overnight because Amanda said &*(^ this, I'm going to bed. Eventually, we got all the sugar on, and made some simple windows and a door from black fondant. The same black fondant created our little men and our little horse.
The bucket was fairly easy. We just stacked up some cake, stuck a skewer in it, and covered it in orange fondant. The handle of the shovel was made from gum paste.
All in all, we worked 4 days on this cake, working about 4 hours each day, excluding baking time. We ate some of the ball, but we wish the fondant warriors would have done a better job. The real menace turned out to be ants, not a beach ball. After taking all the pictures of our finished project, slicing into it to divulge its secret cake/donutness, we were a contemporary Rapunzel, now free from our cakey, castley prison. And they all lived happily every after. The end.
For the beachball, we had quite a time trying to figure out how to make a round cake, especially when we went to Michael's and they were sold out of round cake pans. Neither of us were keen on trying to carve a ball, so we decided to use a mixing bowl with a separate ceramic bowl in the center to help the cake bake evenly and still have an indentation in the middle. On our first try, we were a little too eager to see how our plan worked and we ended up with lots of pieces of poundcake. (That ended up being our sandpail, anyway.) We decided to try again, but this time we let the cake cool completely before removing it from the mixing bowl. Success! Seeing the empty space the two cake halves would have, our only choice was to fill it with donut holes. There you have it-a cake filled with donuts. It's an obvious choice, really. We used canned frosting because it was stickier and spreads thinner. To create the shiny plastic ballness of a shiny plastic ball, we covered it in Fruit By the Foot. (blue raspberry and strawberry...there was supposed to be an orange flavor, but the variety box lacked in said variety.)The ball accoutrements were made with white gum paste. The end of the ball.
Now, the damn castle. It should be said, we thought the ball would be the hard part. But it turns out, you fill a cake with donuts and everything comes up Millhouse. After painkstakingly carving the layers of poundcake into the perfect castle shape, we thought we'd be able to just smack some buttercream on, sprinkle some brown sugar on it, and we'd be magically transported to the beach. Nope. Our stupid tourrets kept falling off, the buttercream was being tempermental, and it took 3 hours to get the buttercream perfect. And then the "sand" wouldn't stick. We made a mixture of light brown sugar, dark brown sugar, and granulated white sugar to replicate sand. Gravity was not our friend. We had to repeatedly pack the sugar on and it was drying way too quickly. In the end, Christine ended up taking it home with her overnight because Amanda said &*(^ this, I'm going to bed. Eventually, we got all the sugar on, and made some simple windows and a door from black fondant. The same black fondant created our little men and our little horse.
The bucket was fairly easy. We just stacked up some cake, stuck a skewer in it, and covered it in orange fondant. The handle of the shovel was made from gum paste.
All in all, we worked 4 days on this cake, working about 4 hours each day, excluding baking time. We ate some of the ball, but we wish the fondant warriors would have done a better job. The real menace turned out to be ants, not a beach ball. After taking all the pictures of our finished project, slicing into it to divulge its secret cake/donutness, we were a contemporary Rapunzel, now free from our cakey, castley prison. And they all lived happily every after. The end.