princess procrastination post.

so the last thing i should be doing right now is being on my blog (hello 9,000 word essay that isn't writing itself...) but here i am! this post is dedicated to the birthday of my lovely housemate anna. hers was the first birthday in our student house which we have affectionately nicknamed 'princess palace' (hey we're all girls and the boys' house is called the 'lad shack' so it's perfectly acceptable!). anyway anna is a real girlie girl (she jumped at the idea of us getting disney princess themed walkie talkies for house communication!) so i thought what would be better than making her a princess palace birthday cake? so here are the results...

i baked three vanilla round sponge cakes (the base one being slightly larger but that was more to do with different sized tins) with a little red food dye in to give it a pink tinge. i cemented these together with strawberry jam (her preferred flavour but it doesn't matter what you use) i also baked a tray of sponge to form the towers. next up i whipped up A LOT of pink butter icing.

assembling the cake

i cut the tray bake into four lengths to create the towers and stuck these on the side of the cake. note to self - put icing on the towers when they are lying flat rather than when up the sides of the cake! while this seemed like it was going to hold together one soon collapsed and the others began to follow suit - so i folded over the bits that were sticking up.

it worked for a minute!

next came the REALLY fun bit. we had done a tesco delivery and i basically added every form of pink sweet known to man to the basket in line with the overly ambitious sketch i had! so here is the finished product and then i'll go into the details:

princess palace!

the doorway made from white chocolate buttons, with a strawberry lace frame and handle. then i used strawberry millions to create a path (stuck down with a bit of water and icing sugar)

the towers with strawberry lace ivy and candyfloss bushes

marshmallow flumps for battlements. for the turrets i covered ice cream cones in an icing sugar and water combo before sprinkling them with hundreds and thousands.

the complete birthday tea - we set very high standards for future birthdays in our house!

well this will have to be it for now - i'm off to continue writing about victorian prostitution (gotta love a free choice history project...!).

love,

nen

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