Motte and Bailey Castle Cake (In Winter and Normal)

Hi, this cake was a practice for my History homework and it actually went really well, when I do the actual thing, I will add a picture and any other notes that I have added. To add a festive theme, I used white fondant to look as if the Motte was covered in snow! It was easier than I expected because we used gingerbread to make the castle almost like a gingerbread house but different. Well, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.



Dietary Info:
-Contains Gluten
-Contains Dairy
-No Nuts
-Suitable for Vegetarians
- Alterations can be made to make it Vegan. If you want ideas feel free to leave a comment.



Cake recipe:
Ingredients:
- 125g/4oz butter or margarine, softened {I used Clover Margarine}
- 125g/4oz caster sugar
- 2 medium eggs
- 125g/4oz self-raising flour
-Green Food Colouring

                                  Method: 
1: Heat the oven to 180℃/160℃ Fan/350℉/Gas 4 
2: Line the baking tins with baking parchment {Next time I do this, I will grease the tin instead}

3: Cream the butter and sugar together until pale. Use an electric hand mixer. {I just mixed with a wooden spoon}

4: Beat in the eggs
5: Sift over the flour and fold in with a spoon.Add in a few drops of food colouring
6: Divide the mixture between the cake tins {I just used a single fairly small cake tin}
7: Cook for 20-25mins. Check if they're ready by using the skewer trick
8: Add icing

                                                                     

Ingredients:
- 350g (12oz) plain flour
- 5ml (1 level tsp) bicarbonate of soda
- 10ml (2 level tsp) ground ginger {We used 3} 
- 100g (4oz) butter or margarine {I used Clover margarine}
- 175g (6oz) light brown soft sugar
- 60ml (4 level tbsp) golden syrup)
- 1 egg

Method: 
1: Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and ginger into a bowl. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar. Beat in the syrup into the egg and stir into the flour mixture.
2: Mix to form a dough and knead until smooth
3: Divide into 2 and roll out on a lightly floured surface to about 0.5cm (1/4in) thick. Now begin to cut into  
4: Bake in the oven at 190℃/℃/375℉/ Gas 5 for 12-15 mins, until golden brown. Cool slightly, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.


Buttercream Recipe:

https://www.bakingmad.com/recipe/buttercream


Ingredients:

• 100g Unsalted Butter (Softened)
• 200g Icing Sugar (We use Silver Spoon)
• 1 tsp Vanilla Extract (We Like Nielsen Massey)
• 1 tbsp Whole Milk
• Green Food Colouring 

Method:

1. Bring your butter to room temperature so that it is softened, then using either a hand or electric mixer beat together the butter adding in the icing sugar gradually until fully incorporated.Add In a few drops of food colouring.
2. Add in the milk and vanilla and continue to beat until the buttercream is light and fluffy. This might take a few minutes, the longer that you beat your buttercream for the light in texture it will be.
3. Once the buttercream is ready, fill a piping bag fitted with a nozzle with the buttercream to pipe decorations on your cupcakes or alternatively, use a pallet knife to smooth your buttercream inside or over your cake. {I used a pallet knife.

Lets Put the cake together!

-First, bake the cake and leave to cool.
-Now make the biscuits using these measurements:
*Fences: 2cm by 7mm {This doesn't have to be exact}. Bake a whole tray of these and you will have spares but you will probably need them.
*Castle/Keep: 4cm by 4cm. Bake 5 of these and indent lines on them to look like wood.
*Bailey Houses:1cm by 1cm. Bake as many as you want but I did about 4 houses so 8 squares.
*Stairs: I used the Fences for this but for the bits at the side, I used a larger one. If you want, you can make some deliberately larger ones at about 1inch by 1/2 an inch

-Once the cake is cooled, if this is not happening quickly you can place it in the fridge for a bit, do a first coat of buttercream, this is called at crumb coat to stick all the crumbs to the sides of the cake. Now place in the fridge to chill.
-Meanwhile, begin rolling out some green fondant. When the buttercream is set, add another coating and place in the fridge for 1/2 as long as you did last time so as not to make the buttercream completely firm.
-Once the buttercream is suffiecently chilled, drape the fondant over the cake and the cake board. You can indiviualy do the cake then the board if you choose to. After this, put back in the fridge.
-Now, uisng a white icing pen, put all the houses togther {The keep and the othe smaller ones}. Once done,take the cake out of the fridge and put the houses in the fridge.
-While the houses are chilling, put the fences up around the bottom of the cake and put the little staircase/laddery bit at the front of the cake coming down.
-Now, you can take the houses out of the fridge and put them onto your cake, the larger one at the top and the smaller ones inside the fence. As well as this, put another fence around the larger house. Use an icing pen, preferably green, to stick them down.
-Now your catsle is complete an you can either put in the fridge to firm up a bit or eat straight away. Note: It will probably stay fresh in the fridge for about 2days. It will keep for longer but it won't taste as good.