Easy Princess Castle Cake

Sunday we celebrated my daughter’s second birthday. What birthday cake would suit a little princess better than a castle in the clouds? Check it out.

For this cake, you’ll need

– A cake mix (I used betty crocker lemon)
– A can of frosting (Again, I used lemon; you can use strawberry or food color your frosting according to your princess’s tastes!)
– Ice-cream cups
– Ice cream cones
– Pink icing that comes in a tube (or whatever color your princess likes)
– Cotton Candy for the clouds
– Pillow mints for the castle “stones” – you could also do grey frosting and chocolate rocks!
– Sugar glitter (optional)
– Toothpicks
– Paper or pink fondant for the windows, castle door, and flags

– You’ll need a tiny doll for this cake. There are some adorable polly-pocket style Disney princesses you can get here . Thesedolls come with flexible rubber clothes and tiny removable shoes and crowns, so for a younger princess, you can find some Disney princess figurines here.

I’ve never been talented in the birthday cake decorating arena, so maybe you can imagine my surprise when this cake turned out as cute as it did, especially since it was so easy.

If you’ve got a little princess in need of a castle cake, start by dividing your favorite cake recipe (mine’s Better Crocker Lemon) between a loaf pan and a square pan. To make it easy to get the cakes out whole, you might want to line the bottoms of the pan with cut-to-size parchment paper. We actually used regular paper and just greased it.

After giving both cakes a good crumb coating (How? Microwave about 1/3 cup frosting for 5 seconds & spread a thin layer over everything to keep crumbs at bay) put the square cake on the serving tray and the loaf cake on top, right across the center. If your loaf was a little too long for the square you can safely take a slice right out of the middle, push the ends together, and hold them in place with toothpicks.

I cut most of my decorations out of pink paper. The “trickiest” cut was the castle door, and really that was pretty easy. I took a 3 inch wide strip of paper, folded it in half twice to make guides, took the edges of the paper toward the center, then folded again at the center. Then I just cut the arch out. Check out the picture & this will make more sense. Of course, if you have a different idea for the door you can use it, this was just one easy way…

Then cut out out windows and flags. Be sure the flags are cut on the fold so they’ll wrap around a toothpick. You can “glue” them onto the top of a toothpick using a little icing. To mount the flags, you’ll need to slice the ends off 5 sugar cones, making a hole just wide enough to hold a toothpick.

Take four ice cream cups and flank them on each side of the loaf cake. Secure them by sticking a toothpick through the bottom of each one. Put one cup upside down, front and center on the loaf. Take your 5 sugar cones and put them upside down on each cup, using a little icing to glue them into place. Thank you LJC (http://ljcfyi.com) for this idea!

Now you just need to mount your flags and add your windows and doors. Add pillow-mint key stones and whatever other decorations you like.

Moments before serving, add clouds by fluffing up some cotton candy with two forks and tucking it around the cake; just note that if you do this step too early, the clouds will melt and look really nasty. I added a tiny doll — this one’s a polly pocket style Cinderella , and candles pointed away from the paper flags… voila! A cake fit for my little princess.

And for the rest of the party, you can find a huge selection of Princess birthday party supplies here… including 99 cent tiaras, pretty princess plates, princess stickers, cello-bags with crowns on them, balloons, costumes, Princess wall-stickers, and even life-size stand up Disney princesses. They even have a stand-up Princess Peach, and a Royal Strawberry Shortcake. Seriously. Every Princess birthday party supply imaginable. Enjoy!