Princess Cake Construction Company, Inc.

Christmas is right around the corner (lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce, like a jungle cat), and there’s so much left to do.  Tree decorating, cookie baking, present wrapping (ahem, present shopping).

But no time for that now, I have a birthday cake to construct!

Yep, I said construct, not bake, because when you have a birthday for a princess, you need a castle.  It’s a rule, or possibly a law of nature.

I started off some days earlier, with two boxes of cake mix (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, but it saves so much time, and I got to hand it to Betty Crocker, she makes a tasty cake), and two boxes of pudding mix.  You should always mix pudding into your cake batter.  It makes all the difference.  I baked the layers of cake (three of them, two large, one small), let them cool, then moved them into the freezer.  After a brief digression to make a test batch of chocolate stout beer cupcakes, I let the cake layers freeze hard while I went out and bought ice cream cones.

On party day, I took the cake layers out of the freezer, and whipped up the frosting, pink, of course.  I frosted the top of the two larger layers and stacked the layers on top of each other, putting the small layer on top.

Next, I carved out circles at each corner and one in the middle, fitting an ice cream cup into each hole.  Then, I frosted the rest of the cake.  I put the ice cream cones upside on top of the ice cream cups, using a small amount of frosting as glue to hold the cones in place.

Finally, I put on the finishing touches.  I put a border of frosting around the bottom and around the top layer, around each cone (covering up irregularities on the holes I cut in the cake), and a drop of frosting on top of each cone.  Then, I made a batch of blue frosting to lay down around the castle, making a moat.  My wife and daughter helped by adding candy and mini-marshmallow touches all around the cake.  The result: magnificient!

I’m also available for weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Now, some of you might have noticed me mention something about chocolate stout beer cupcakes.  This is a recipe I’ve adapted from the Coca-Cola chocolate cake recipe which can be found here.  I used Young’s Chocolate Stout (and jotted down a chocolate stout recipe to make myself at some point).  I mixed up a chocolate stout frosting to go on top.  The results were quite yummy, with a strong taste of the component beer.  I’m jiggering the recipe a little to make it a little richer, but the stout frosting is simply fantastic.  Want to try it at home?  Here’s the recipe:

2 cups sugar

2 cups flour

½ cup butter

½ cup vegetable oil

3 tablespoons cocoa

8 oz. chocolate stout

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ buttermilk

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup chocolate pudding

Mix together, pour into cake pans or cupcake holders, bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

For the frosting, mix together with an electric blender:

½ cup butter

3 cups confectioner sugar

3 tablespoons chocolate stout

3 oz. melted baking chocolate