1000 = Rapunzel Cake

I had it in my head that when I finally hit 1000 hits on my blog last month that I would write something special, something remarkable. Yet I didn't expect it to happen quite so suddenly. One night I went to bed and it had gotten 941 hits. The next day it was 1052. Whoa! I missed it.

It seems like the perfect opportunity to bring in something from the past, mostly because it is nearing my bed time now and I've not a lot of time for typing. Plus, the next thing I want to write about requires some measuring and a lot of photos, so it will have to wait until I have more time.

 This is a cake my sister and I worked on for my nieces birthday. If it isn't obvious, it's the tower of Rapunzel or if not the tower of Rapunzel, a tower that she would have been entirely comfortable residing in.

My sister baked multiple cupcakes, which she stacked on a long knitting needle skewered through aluminum covered cardboard, and then topped the whole ensemble with an inverted sugar cone. She was busy doing other birthday preparations and left the decorating to me.

First the cake was frosted with white butter cream (shortening cream?) frosting. Then, using a flat tip, like a Wilton # 46 or 47, I put grey bricks over each spot where crumbs bled through the frosting (too honest?) and in places where the frosting was too thin. Also to surround the tower window.

The same tip was used to layer shingles one over the other on the roof of the tower. After that,  it was just a matter of adding flowers and vines and creating the grassy knoll on which Rapunzel stands. With the excess frosting, coordinating cupcakes were decorated to surround the base of the tower.

Another really good idea that my sister had was to buy a microwave tray at a thrift shop. It makes a sturdy, glass serving tray to display Rapunzel, her tower, and the surrounding countryside.

One change I would recommend to anyone attempting this type of a cake is to use straight sided pans, like the upcycled, canned-chicken pans, rather than cupcake pans where the sides taper inward. By doing so, one would eliminate the waves in the sides of the structure.

Also, (completely unrelated, but what my husband is viewing right now), the villain in the James Bond Skyfall movie is possibly one of the creepiest (on multiple levels) individuals ever cast in a 007 film.