sand castle cake results

[Sundaymom]

Well, instead of making the castle cake with the ice cream cone towers and crushed vanilla wafers for sand, I ended up buying a castle cake pan instead. It worked great as far as the cake coming out of the pan (my biggest fear), but now I wish I had made the more "homemade" cake. I mean how many different ways can you bake a castle cake? The cake actually tastes good and will be great with ice cream, but you can't exactly frost this kind of cake. At least, I don't have the patience to outline each window, brick, etc. which is the only way I can think of to frost it.

I sprayed the inside with oil and sifted in a little brown sugar to look like sand. Not sure that was a good idea since the sugar could have made the cake stick or given a burned taste. Actually, the sugar that is on the cake reminds me of pineapple upside down cake. I used yellow cake mix, but pineapple flavored cake mix would make it taste even more like upside down cake. I also used brown sugar for sand around the cake. Wanted to put some white chocolate candy shells around the base, but had trouble finding them. I found some star birthday candles on a toothpick. I plan to put 4 on the towers and 1 on the roof by the door since she is 5 years old.

Also, the pan was expensive. I did see a house pan at Michael's Craft Store that could be decorated many different ways (as a cottage, a christmas house, etc.) It stood up like a 3-D cake and cost 1/3 the amount of the castle cake pan. On the other hand, it required MUCH more decorating with frosting. I will probably go back and get it  though along with the cake top stencils I saw and some other cute cake stuff. And I don't even make that many cakes!!!! I guess I'm getting obsessed.