Great Fun etc: Tangled Party: Rapunzel's Tower Cake

Rapunzel's Tower is pretty simple to make: a simple round cake as the base with a donut stack tower and chocolate dipped ice-cream cones on top.

I made a Madeira cake for the base, as it is a dense heavy cake, solid enough to firmly attach a tower to - plus, its delicious and keeps well in the fridge.

Madeira Cake
175g butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
teaspoon grated lemon rind
3 eggs
1/2 cups flour*
1 teaspoon baking powder

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy then stir in lemon rind. In a separate bowl beat the eggs until they are thick. Sift flour and baking powder together and then add to the creamed mixture alternately with the eggs, stirring until combined. Bake in a round tin lined with baking paper at 180o for 30-40 minutes or until the cake springs back when lightly touched.

* I used Bakels Gluten Free Baking mix for a gluten free cake; it worked perfectly.

When the cake is completely cool, ice with pale green buttercream frosting.

Lemon Buttercream Frosting:
100g butter, softened
1 cup of icing sugar
1 tablespoon of milk
1 teaspoon of grated lemon rind
a drop of green food colouring

Beat together until creamy and delicious (and then let your toddler lick the beater)

Now comes the fun part. The decorating!

You will Need:
12-15 Mini ring donuts
Bamboo skewers
Two kinds of icecream cones:
1 cuplet cone (square bottomed) and 1 regular cone
white chocolate (for melting)
various shades of food colouring including purple
Fondant icing

First prepare the cones for the top of the tower, so the chocolate has time to set before you need to use them.
Cut the top off the cuplet cone as shown. Have the cones ready to dip as soon as the chocolate is melted.
Melt the white chocolate in a bowl on top of a pot of boiling water. Once the chocolate is melted you will need to work quickly as the chocolate can quickly become thick and grainy and impossible to dip.

As soon as the chocolate is runny, dip the half cone in it and place to one side on a tray lined with baking paper.
Quickly stir in a tiny dot of purple gel food colouring and then dip the pointy cone in the now-purple white chocolate. if the mixture has started to thicken already you will need to carefully coat it as best you can. You might want to dip two cones in case one gets broken while assembling.

Position the first donut where your want the tower to be, then poke a number of bamboo skewers in, around the inside edge of the "hole"

Slide more donuts over the skewers until you have the stem of a donut tower.

Leave a few centimetres of the skewers showing at the top. (This is where the next item will be attached... the cuplet cone we dipped earlier.)

Smear a little bit of the remaining purple melted chocolate on the top donut and quickly place the white-dipped cuplet cone on top. Press a little to make firm.

Dip base of the purple cone into the melted purple chocolate and then carefully place on top of the white cone, as shown.

Decorate with vine and flowers made from coloured fondant icing. You just work the colour into a piece of icing by kneading it. Gel colours work best for this as they are vibrant and don't make the icing sticky. You get the packets of fondant icing from any supermarket. the one I found was called "Pettinice".

(Icing roses tutorial found here - they are very simple to make!)

Then show it to your daughter and watch her squeal with delight and kiss you with 1000 happy kisses as she tells you you're the cleverest mummy in the whole wide world.