The kit runs $24.99 at Michaels, but it is RARELY EVER on sale. What does that mean? It means you can use the 40% off coupon and get it for about $15!!!
I got the Frozen Jelly Belly jellybeans which were very pretty "frosty" looking colors in blues and purple and white to add a special touch to the cake, and I was fortunate to find a play set with both princesses and Olaf on clearance at Wal-Mart.
The best part about this cake is that the kit takes all of the work out of it. Here's a photo of the parts I was using...
Each of the towers has a cone piece to place on top. The cones get coated with icing, and you can pipe icing anywhere you want as well. You can make royal icing and coat the pieces. I've seen some really neat designs like the sandcastle which gets coated completely in a sand color and left to harden before using. I chose to keep all of the parts white except for cones which got coated with buttercream icing.
The cake only needed to feed about 20 people, so I went with a sheet cake in 9 x 13 size. I cut the sheet cake in half lengthwise, and then I layered it so I ended up with four slabs of cake.
Finally, I iced the cake smooth with first a coat of icing to catch the crumbs (we call that dirty icing!) and then iced it again a second time smooth.
To do the final layer of icing, I piped some blue around the bottom and iced the rest of the cake thickly with white icing. I took a long flat metal scraper to go around the cake and scrape it into a smooth side on each side. This allowed the blue and white icing to come together as one. It turned out really nicely!
Once iced, it was time to put the pieces of the kit on it. I chose several different sizes of towers and placed them straight into the cake in some cases and in others "glued" to the sides of the cake with the help of some icing.
I think the worst part of using this kit is that you have to worry about the customer getting all of the pieces back to you. I've used this castle kit twice now, so it has probably paid for itself now, but it would be heartbreaking to have to buy a new kit because pieces were missing!
After placing everything where I wanted it, I piped a border around the bottom of the cake and also piped a border around the base of each tower or part to hold it in place.
For this cake, I striped my icing bag inside with blue and white so when the icing came out it was a blue/white combined color. It came out beautifully.
Aren't these jellybeans beautiful???!!! I used them to accent the cake, cementing them on with icing.
Melted white and blue chocolate in piping bags allowed me to pipe out little accent pieces and snowflakes. While the chocolate was setting, I sprinkled it with sugar crystals in blue and white. They were then placed in the freezer for 10 or 15 minutes to set up. Once done, they were placed on the cake in random spots to really make the cake sparkle.
The finished product with all of the embellishments! I chose to write on the cake board instead of on the cake for the birthday message.
I took a multitude of pictures when it was finished from various angles....
In the end, a little girl had a beautiful cake in her favorite theme. She is truly a little princess, and she deserved to celebrate her third birthday with the cake of her dreams!
On a hilarious side note....the grandfather commented on Facebook that it was overwhelming trying to figure out how to deconstruct it and that they almost sent out for Tastykakes to get them past the humger while they figured it out! LOL. Seriously, it was as easy as just taking the towers off one at a time and washing the icing of of them. It all came down to one sheet cake layered into four layers.
Wilton made life very easy with this one....a great kit that makes it look like you did a lot of work when in reality the kit did the work for you!
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