Castle Cake (Destroy Your Food and Eat It)

Castle:
225g/8oz butter or margarine, softened at room temperature 225g/8oz caster sugar
4 medium eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
225g/8oz self raising flour
milk, to loosen

Decorations:
Strawberry laces
Wafers
Jelly Babies
Ice Cream Cones
Jelly

Catapult:
Metal Spoon
Wooden Dow
Elastic
Elastic Bands
Nails
Glue
Saw, chisel

Castle Base:
Cardboard
Paper
PVA
Water
Clingfilm

Preparation:
In a large group, sit around a table and begin to brainstorm ideas for a Social Digital Banquet. This can take anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes. As the discussion and ideas begin to heat up, ensure you have pen and paper ready to take note of them in the form of a spider diagram. Once you feel you have enough ideas, you can begin to discuss them in your group, developing them further. After this, it is a good idea to decide on the group’s favourite concept as this recipe will take several days to fully complete.

Using the cardboard, begin to sculpt the base for your castle. There is no set size for the base, so use your own discretion but remember that you have to bake enough cake to cover it. Next, mix 1 part PVA with 3 parts of water together and pour into a bowl. Then dip the torn up newspaper, one at a time until fully covered, and carefully begin to fully cover the cardboard base for the castle. Now comes the fun part! Wait anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes for the layer of paper mache to dry. Repeat the process a further 3 times or until you feel the base has become solid enough. When paper is dry cover in tin foil to protect the paper and create a hygienic surface.

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Grease and line 2 x 18cm/7in cake tins with baking paper.
3. Cream the butter and the sugar together in a bowl until pale and fluffy.
4. Beat in the eggs, a little at a time, and stir in the vanilla extract.
5. Fold in the flour using a large metal spoon, adding a little extra milk if necessary, to create a batter with a soft dropping consistency.
6. Divide the mixture between the cake tins and gently spread out with a spatula.
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until golden-brown on top and a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
8. Remove from the oven and set aside for 5 minutes, then remove from the tin and peel off the paper. Place onto a wire rack.
9. Sandwich the cakes together with jam, lemon curd or whipped cream and berries or just enjoy on its own.

Castle Construction:
Once you have baked enough cake for the size of your castle, now all you have to do is simply begin to construct the castle to your design. First, allow the cake to cool, and then cut it up into cake building blocks. Make sure they are of a size that will allow for the castle to stand, but also let the walls fall when struck by objects. For the castle walls, lay the first layer of the construction, butter icing the top of each block. Continue this process, adding more levels on top of each other until you have reached the desired height for your castle.

For this stage you can really be quite creative and create a range of ballistic weapons of your choice to fire at the castle cake and add toppings to it. The catapult we made was based on pictures that we found online and in books. First cut a basic frame out of dow and attach them together using nails and adhesive. You then have to attach some sort of elastic to the structure and a spoon for firing the sweets and condiments. You will probably find that you will have to adjust and modify the catapult to improve accuracy.   

Final Touches:
Now that you have fully constructed your castle and base, it’s time to give them a touch of much needed flair! Why not add some jelly babies to serve as edible guards for your castle? You can also construct a drawbridge made out of wafers with rope made out of strawberry laces as a tasty way of crossing the castle’s moat. For the moat you will need to create some jelly and allow it to set over night over night. Once set, cut the jelly into blocks big enough to fill the built-in moat in the base for the cake.

For more information on the ideas behind the cake see:

http://interaction.dundee.ac.uk/~rjohnston/wordpress/category/pressure-project/