SC - The British Museum Cookbook

[DianaFiona at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/30/98 10:17:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time, uther at lcc.net
writes:

<< 
 Also, we are hosting Crown Tourney in Oct. and I have someone who wants to
 do an edible castle for the head table.  I would LOVE to hear
 suggestions/comments on this.  I would appreciate any alternative ideas to
 present to this lady.  She really wants to make a special contribution
 food-wise to Their Majesties feast but she is new at this and I would like
 to give her more than one option to try before hand.
  >>
      I did a castle wedding cake for a friend's period-style wedding. She
wasn't worried about it being a period recipe, she just wanted it in the right
shape (This wasn't at an official event, they held their own just for the
occasion). After a good bit of deliberation, I decided to use my favorite
pound cake recipe. It's a *very* dense, heavy, sturdy cake, that is also
yummy. I experimented with icings, and ended up using a caramel icing recipe
that my Laurel's mother makes. It was tasty, held things together well, and
was a good color. (I *hate* the so-called "buttercream" icings on most wedding
cakes, besides which, this was in the middle of the summer at an un-
airconditioned site. The sugar-and-shortening stuff would have run
everywhere!)
	I just did a simple "fort" style castle, both for ease and because the whole
wedding was early period. Just a rectangle, with round towers on the corners.
I did, however, do some detailing in royal icing, of vines and flowers on the
walls and such. I think I put a moat around the outside--it's been a few
years, and my memory is terrible ;-)--with a drawbridge descending from the
gate opening. The towers had crenelations made of sugar cubes (a major pain to
ice, but cute........ :-) ) The interior had "trees" made of parsley--small
bunches, with the stems wrapped in brown thread for the bark. I didn't try to
make any buildings in the center--there wasn't much space, since the cake
needed to be in fairly thick slabs to hold up.
	The whole thing rested on a piece of plywood, which was covered with foil and
green icing to resemble grass. I believe there were a few "trees" scattered
around the board as well. The board itself rested on a large wooden serving
platter borrowed from our shire, which had handles that were helpful in moving
the monster. The cake was pinned together with toothpicks as needed, and
skewers in some places. The towers ended up being cut from the regular sheets
of cake in rounds, iced, and skewered in stacks, since I had trouble finding
any molds (Cans, etc.) the right size to bake them in whole.
      All in all, it was a lot of fun and a lot of work. Our shire was pretty
tired of that pound cake and icing before it was over, since they got to eat
all the many trial runs I had to do before I found an icing that worked well
enough! ;-) It certainly wasn't the most professional looking version of the
idea that's been done, but it tasted good (one thing I was determined to
accomplish!) and the bride was happy with it. I keep intending to play with
that sort of thing more to get more skilled at it.......... Yet another
project in the queue! ;-)

		Ldy Diana
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