For my son's 10th birthday I decided to make a Mario cake, as Mario is the phase he's going through at the moment.
I researched different cake's that I could do, and then randomly came across the castle cake mold in a shop. Once I bought that, it was just a matter of researching how the Mario characters looked.
It took me roughly 8 hours to make this cake. That includes the 3 hours it took to bake 3 cakes I used as bases (1 hour each).
When I was young, you used to be able to buy these cake mixes called 'Krazy Kakes'. They had all random sorts of cake and icing flavors that clashed, like orange cake with licorish icing. One of the ones I remember making had instructions to add a small amount of sprinkles. During the cooking process the sprinkles melt leaving a rainbow effect. It is important to add to not over do the sprinkles if your after a rainbow effect. The primary colors, blue, red and yellow, all make black when mixed together. So if you add too many sprinkles, your more likely to get blacks and browns inside the cake rather then the rainbow effect. So less is more in this case.
I used the three cake bases. One, for the castle, one for the base and one for extra height on the base. One of my big fails though, is that during the baking process, my cakes baked higher in the center, giving them rounded tops. I could have cut the roundness away, leaving them all flush, but I chose to keep them, giving the illusion that my castle was floating in the sky.
I chose icing for the blue sky on the base, as the Fondant icing decorations would glue to the cake better that way. The rest of the decor is all different color Fondant, with the exception of Mario and Luigi, those I bought separately.
My second and largest fail was the roof! I had thought about filling the top with jelly, or lollies etc, but then I figured there was enough sugar already! I decided to pop a roof on top, but didn't have enough red to fill, and without support in the center my roof could collapse. So I created support beams using left over white Fondant from the castle, and then covered it in a thin layer of red.
My thoughts on this cake; it's not the greatest, but for a first experience using Fondant Icing, I think I did really quite well!
Chez
It took me roughly 8 hours to make this cake. That includes the 3 hours it took to bake 3 cakes I used as bases (1 hour each).
When I was young, you used to be able to buy these cake mixes called 'Krazy Kakes'. They had all random sorts of cake and icing flavors that clashed, like orange cake with licorish icing. One of the ones I remember making had instructions to add a small amount of sprinkles. During the cooking process the sprinkles melt leaving a rainbow effect. It is important to add to not over do the sprinkles if your after a rainbow effect. The primary colors, blue, red and yellow, all make black when mixed together. So if you add too many sprinkles, your more likely to get blacks and browns inside the cake rather then the rainbow effect. So less is more in this case.
I used the three cake bases. One, for the castle, one for the base and one for extra height on the base. One of my big fails though, is that during the baking process, my cakes baked higher in the center, giving them rounded tops. I could have cut the roundness away, leaving them all flush, but I chose to keep them, giving the illusion that my castle was floating in the sky.
I chose icing for the blue sky on the base, as the Fondant icing decorations would glue to the cake better that way. The rest of the decor is all different color Fondant, with the exception of Mario and Luigi, those I bought separately.
My second and largest fail was the roof! I had thought about filling the top with jelly, or lollies etc, but then I figured there was enough sugar already! I decided to pop a roof on top, but didn't have enough red to fill, and without support in the center my roof could collapse. So I created support beams using left over white Fondant from the castle, and then covered it in a thin layer of red.
My thoughts on this cake; it's not the greatest, but for a first experience using Fondant Icing, I think I did really quite well!
Chez