Castle Cake Preparations

I spent most of last week trying to figure out just how I was going to put together the castle cake for the bridal shower coming up this Saturday. Cake Central has several discussions in their forums on using the Wilton castle kit, most to say how much trouble they had with it. Two main things I learned were to put the cake together at the site, and secure the columns as best as possible.

After playing around with couple ideas for flowers I decided on making small fondant roses and rosebuds. After I am finished with them I will paint them with luster dust to give them a bit of shine and elegance.

This is what I have made so far:
I made a batch of royal icing and practiced piping it around the window on one of the columns and experimented with the edible glitter. I also wanted to make sure that the tiny rosebuds would stay secured to the columns. For the cake I will secure the roses with green colored royal icing. So far everything I have tried hasn't been to difficult and the roses seem to be holding to the columns just fine.

Practice Window: Royal Icing around "window" with edible glitter and 3 rosebuds.


Testing the royal icing on the columns:

Roses for Cake before Luster Dust: The roses have white cornstarch on them, once they are painted with the luster dust the cornstarch won't be seen.
Close-up of rose-buds on window:

Tomorrow I hope to get the flowers are painted, and start baking the cake layers.