Tangled Rapunzel Tower cake tutorial

This tutorial covers setting up the support structure and decoration of a “Tangled” Rapunzel Tower Cake as can be seen on https://www.facebook.com/CustomCakeDesigns ….

This support structure was made for a cake that needed to cater for 70 desert size portions of cake. As it was a rather large cake, a strong ‘tower’ was needed to support the weight and hence plumbers plastic tubing / piping was selected as the main core of the tower. (This plastic tubing and capping can be bought at any hardware store in the plumbing sections)

To begin, a block of wood was screwed to the base of the cake board to act as an additional support anchor for the capping of the piping and a glue gun used to line the inside of this to adhere the pipe to the capping …

Once the glue is in place, push the pole / pipe into the capping slot and hold for a few seconds to make sure that it has a strong contact connection.

Once glued in place, it should look like the image below …

This is what will form the basis of the tower and the support structure for the entire cake, so make sure that this is glued and secured properly!

To create the support for the base of the top of the tower (i..e where Rapunzel would spend her days and nights), you need to get a cake board that is the same size as the cake that you are baking for the top of the tower.

As per the bottom part of the board, a block is screwed to the base of the board so that this can slot this into the top of the pipe …

Glue this into position and again hold to ensure that a tight fit is obtained. Once in place and glued securely, it should look like this …

(Don’t worry about the plastic and nails that are exposed as these are covered later and have no contact at all with the cake)

Wrap the pipe tightly with cling film and use rice krispie treats to mould the bottom and top parts of the tower.

Smooth the RKTs with melted chocolate so that when you cover the tower in fondant, you have a smooth finish …

Add any other ‘lumps and bumps’ (with Rice Krispie Treats) that you see fit to give the tower a little bit of character, cover again in melted chocolate.

When this is dry and secure, cover everything completely in white fondant. While the fondant is still soft, draw in any feature cracks or marks that you would like the tower to have when complete …

Your structure is now in place and you are now ready to start adding cake and decorating …

Add the sections of brickwork that you would like to see on the tower and ensure that you press the edges of the brickwork into the fondant when adhering this to the tower so that it doesn’t look like it was placed on top of the white fondant. (Alternatively you could also cut out pieces and replace these with the brickwork, but I personally feel this is a lot of fiddly and potentially very irrit
ating work for little return :) )

I used a brickwork embosser to create the brickwork and once it was placed on the tower, I used a sculpting tool to redraw the lines of the brickwork so that it was more pronounced. Once this was done, I airbrushed lightly over the brickwork with a chocolate brown colour to highlight the tones and crevices of the bricks

To create the green foliage, I melted white chocolate and added a little green colouring. Normally you would use powder to colour the chocolate, but in this case, I didn’t mind if the chocolate seized a little as this helped to create the look that I needed. You need to work very quickly as the chocolate sets fast (even in warm weather), so work in small areas by adding the chocolate foliage and
then sticking the flowers on the areas that you would like.

Where you have drawn cracks in the plaster, using a paintbrush and powdered brown colour, lightly ‘paint’ in-between the cracks to highlight them on the tower.

You could also add some extra vines trailing down the tower if you see fit, but because I had many flowers, I excluded the vines from this tower.

To begin creating the roof structure, I used a sugar ice-cream cone and filled the bottom with Rice Krispie Treats to provide more stability and to close the gap where the sugar cone over laps.

Cover the cone with a colour that is going to similar to the roof tiles. The reason for this is that there will be slight gaps in the shingles and if you have a matching colour underneath, these gaps are no problem :)

Cover the cake that will be placed on top of the tower and decorate as you see fit :)

Use 3 different shades of lilac (or whatever colour you choose) and randomly place these on the roof to tile it. I had made a chimney (on a cocktail stick) and the ‘spires’ beforehand which you now need to insert into the cake. Be very careful doing this as you don’t want a major split in the roof, so do this as soon as you have finished tiling so that the roof is still slightly soft

Add Rupunzel looking wistfully out of the window to the ground below. Make sure that you only make a flattened head (at the back) so that she doesn’t stick out of the window too much and don’t add any hair at all until the cake is complete.

Add your cake to the back and sides of the tower. This is the fun bit as you don’t need to be careful here, just add as much or as little as you like until you get the look that you are after.

Once you are happy with the shape of the ‘surrounding fields’, ice all exposed cake in buttercream or ganache (or whatever filling of choice)

Cover the fields in green fondant and add any additional features that you would like to make it more interesting.

To add a bit more depth, I airbrushed the green with shades of darker green and brown to give a little more definition. Using royal icing, attach the cake to the top board and while this sets, decorate the fields by adding flowers, rocks, foam to the water, pathways etc

Once ALL your decoration is complete, add Rapunzels hair. You need to ensure that her hair is attached to the tower itself in several places so that it does not break. If you have to move the cake at all (which I am sure 99% of people would need to transport it somewhere), the hair needs to be very stable as any movement will cause the hair strands to snap and ruin the overall look and feel of the cake. You don’t want to get to this point to have it ruined at the last hurdle!!

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and found it helpful. More tutorials coming soon on https://www.facebook.com/CustomCakeDesigns – please ‘Like’ to keep up to date with latest submissions :)