Customer Reviews

Wilton 301-910 Romantic Castle Cake Set

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

About a month ago, my daughter said she'd like Daddy to make her a castle cake for her third birthday. I found this kit online, and thought it looked easy enough. How hard could a "kit cake" be to make?

Once I got into this project, I quickly realized that to make this cake "right", it would be no quick endeavor! We planned ahead. Two days before the party, we started baking cakes and making flowers (easy enough to do that the soon to be birthday girl even helped--fun like Playdo). We froze the cakes.

The day before the party, I iced the (still frozen) cakes and put the glitter on all of the areas it needed to be on (roof-tops, around windows, etc...) For a dad, this is doable, but certainly not easy (I was up until 3 am working on this--of course, I didn't start until very late as I returned home from work late).

The party was in the evening, so I had time the day of to assemble and finish the cake. First, I did rolled fondant on the top only of the base cake, and on the entire second (smaller) cake. Instead of using "melted candy" as the instructions suggest, I used a glue gun to attach some sticks to the towers to help keep them upright. The glue stuck fine, but the wieght of the roof-tops made a couple of the towers unstable at times. After putting on the towers, I used Valentine's day M&M's (red, pink, and White) as "rocks" for the walls of the base cake.

This cake is no easy project for a dad with limited cake baking know-how, and it is also very time consuming to make it right. When my newly-turned 3 year old little princess put her arms around me and said, "Dad, I'm really proud of you. You did a good job on my castle cake." it was ALL WORTH IT!

I just made the cake yesterday, and it was GORGEOUS! I made some adjustments after reading some of the helpful reviews, however. I drilled small holes in the bottoms of the tiers so that I could insert wooden dowels. This made them more sturdy, and kept them upright in the cake. For the outside tiers, I used a glue gun to secure them to the cake round. The finished product looked just like the picture!

This cake was the hit of my daughter's party! I would consider myself to be a VERY amateur cake decorator, but I had no problems producing great results with a few modifications to the instructions. Like one of the other reviewers, I drilled holes in the bottom of the towers to accommodate the dowels. This worked out great and they were very sturdy. I didn't have to transport the cake anywhere, so icing worked out O.K. for the towers sitting directly on the cake board, but I would definitely recommend a hot glue gun if you're going to be driving the cake anywhere. The finished product looked great, and several people have already asked me where they can buy the set. I know that I'll be using mine again!

I made a Cinderella castle for my daughter's birthday with this kit. It was relatively easy to use with one exception -- make sure you get some fairly large dowels to stabilize the turrets. The kit suggests using candy melts to attach the turrets to dowels and inserting dowels into the cake. Unfortunately, I tried this with a smaller dowel and while it worked, the turrets were VERY wobbly. The cake was a huge hit with the three-year-old crowd, nonetheless.

I bought this kit to make my cousins 5th birthday cake. It took a while to decorate the cake since I am not used to decorating plastic. I found my solution to the support dowels was to use the melted candy to adhere the towers to flower nails. This worked great. I also found it easy to adhere the larger towers to the cake board with the melted candy. I also used this kit to make a sand castle cake for my own son. It was so cute. If you are in need of additional instruction on this kit you can go directly to the wilton.com website and find them there. It has more specific info on what size cakes you need to achieve the same proportions that you see. I found that very useful. I am no expert by any means, but a little bit of common sense and imagination go a long way with products like these. I think this is a great product and would highly recommend it.

I got this last year to make my daughter's 5th birthday cake. It was the second castle cake I had made. In addition to this kit, you will need dowels which you have to cut to size. Once that is done, the instructions say to attach the dowels to the turrets with melted candy. I tried to use melted chocolate, but they would not stay upright once in the cake. I finally used a glue gun, which was more secure. Next, decorate the turrets and tower tops with colored icing before assembling. Now just try to assemble these parts without screwing up the icing you so painstakingly applied. Lastly, secure the 4 remaining towers outside the cake - nope, no instructions on how to make these stay upright. One of the reviewers used a glue gun - I wish I had thought of that. Neither Icing nor melted candy worked, and the thing fell apart on the way to the event - only a few miles from my house. I have lovely pictures of my daughters cake with extremely sad looking towers turned everywhich way. I thought I was somewhat experienced before making this cake. This was an extremely frustrating experience.

this product is a must if you love to bake or if you are a seasonal baker i recently purchased it and put it to use for a recent birthday and it was a big hit with the adults and children so if you love to bake or just a seasonal baker i recommend this product to any one who is a kid at hart.

I rated this a 4 because it looks very impressive in the end. But if asked how I was rating for difficulty (time to get it all together) I would have rated it a 2 because the instructions suck, it takes allot of extra purchasing of "stuff" and unless you read reviews of others this would have been a disaster.

First let me thank the other reviewers on here because my sister showed this Castle Cake set to my niece who really loved it before asking me to make it. Having never taken cake decorating classes (being self taught) this could have been a disaster without the suggestions of other reviewers. Now having done it successfully I will add my own comments.

The towers you see for this cake come with no holes on the bottom. So even though the instructions tell you to anchor them with dowels they don't tell you what you do with no holes. Reviewers suggested drilling holes in bottom of towers and securing dowels. I ended up with the cake place suggesting that I don't drill (taking a chance of cracking) and instead use wooden golf tees and gluing them to the bottom. This I did, but went through 4 kinds of glue before finding one that worked. You buy E-6000, sand the bottom of tower and top of tee, wipe them clean, put thin film of E-6000 on each part, let them sit for at least two minutes, push them together and then turn the towers upside down and let them cure for 72 hours.....this worked.

Also the 4 towers you see sitting next to the cake, the instructions say put a drop; of the frosting you are using to hold it.....no way....I did what one person suggested and hot glue gunned them onto the cake board....that held them great.

A variety of issues came up from reviewers about transporting the cake so while I glued the towers to the board in advance and inserted doors and windows on the cake the rest I did not put on the cake until reaching my destination. I put them totally together and then shoved the golf tee bottoms in green florist Styrofoam that I had wedged in a large shoe box. I took my white frosting in a bag with me to put the designs around the base of the towers and the cake...that worked great.

Also a variety of issues came up from reviewers on getting the cone-like spires, 1) onto the tower bases and 2) getting them look that glittery by using frosting and edible glitter as the instructions say.

Personally I used regular really fine "Martha Stewart Glitter." I took Elmer's glue and a small sponge brush, brushed the glue on all over the spires, sprinkled the glitter on them and let them dry. For the door and other window pieces I used a small art brush and outlined the parts and sprinkled glitter and let dry. When towers where fully ready with tees and spires fully glittered and dried, I hot glue gunned the glitter spires to the tower and then spaced them out in the florist Styrofoam. This allows them to be all ready when I decorated the cake for me to pipe on the leaves and flowers onto all the window ledges. Because the glitter sticks really well, because I had made sure that excess glitter was tapped off (using a cosmetic brush) and because I did not assemble the top parts of this on the cake until on-site, no glitter got on the cake.

The instructions tell you to use a 10 inch an 8 inch round, I used a 12 inch and 10 inch and that was just fine. If you are using regular cake mixes this will take you 5 mixes to make 4 layers (2 of each). If you are like me (an amateur) note that you will need dowels to put in the bottom cake under where the second layer will be put (about 4) in order not to have the top layer sink into the bottom layer. You will need to put about 4 cake boards together to hold the bottom layer and 2 for the top layer. And you will need to anchor the entire cake with one dowel in the middle of the cake. So for this after you assemble the smaller cake round boards and tape them together you center out a hole in the boards with the dowel for easy positioning.

So although the cake set says you have everything you need in the package with the exception of the pans. You still will need dowels, hot glue gun and glue sticks, golf tees, e-6000 glue, Elmer's white craft glue, and whatever glitter you plan on using, edible or not. It also does not come with the pans, tip, bags, colors etc. Basically it's just the plastic pieces you see on the cake.

Now once this was finished...the hardest part being the craft project of getting the towers and spires together, it was impressive. A great hit at the party and it transferred with no problems at all....OH NOTE: I got one of those big flats that hold some kind of fruit and used that to put the cake in. I found mine at Costco but grocery stores should have them for free....made it totally inflexible for easy transport.

I thought after reading the instructions for this kit that it wouldn't be that hard. I went to wilton.com to get further suggestions on how to make putting this cake/kit together as simple as possible. Let me tell you, when people suggest to start early on this - they are not kidding. I had a party on Sunday. I started the cakes and frosting on Friday. I set the whole day on Saturday aside to decorate. I ended up calling in my sister and my mother to help me out. All together we ended up spending 23 hours on this cake! Plus, to save time I just went and bought the buttercream frosting because after making one batch I realized that you need way more than just one batch to complete this. The instructions said nothing about needing at least 4 batches of buttercream frosting. The cake looked great by the time we got done with it, but honestly I was so sick and tired of looking at it by the time we were done that the "wow" factor was completely gone. All the rest of the guests were amazed by the cake and told us what a great job we did. I guess I just need to remind myself that I did this for my twin girls that were turning 4. They thought that cake was great - and that's all that matters!! Next time, if there is a next time, I think I will take the kit to the local bakery and see how much they would charge me to make it!! I would not recommend this kit if you do not have prior cake decorating experience. It is a lot of work and a huge undertaking.

It clearly says right on the box "Includes Everything You Need". That would indicate to me (and most people) that besides the cake and possibly icing - everything you need is included in the box. This is incorrect. You are expected to purchase dowels and do drilling! in order for this cake to stand up. Very disapppointing! Wilton should be ashamed of itself. Maybe this is good for a professional cake decorator who already has these types of materials and has possibly done something like this, but for the rest of us - not good. The only thing this box includes are a bunch of crappy plastic castle pieces and some TERRIBLE instructions. Save your money and sanity and shell out the money and buy one at the food store.