My little sweetie girl is having her big first birthday party coming up, I have decided to make her a princess castle cake along with a tray of assorted girly girl cookies, and gourmet cupcakes for the adults who aren't as into tonnes of icing (a recommended option to have at parties). The body of the cake will be 3 layers high, with carved out pillars and iced ice cream cones for turrets, and an additional 3 cake layers up the center of the castle. I am trying my hand at something brand new for this cake (as it is my own and I love to experiment) and I am going to pipe out chocolate garnishes and decorations and use them as detail for my cake. So we shall see how it works out!
So far for the cookies we have circles, hearts, and flowers. The nice thing about doing cookies and a cake is that I can use my leftover royal icing to make intricate transfers that I will put on the cake to give it a nice feminine lacy look. But piped chocolate has a similar affect, so I'll feel out my design as I go.
Well our party went very well, the cake and cupcakes were a hit! Boy did the cake ever use a lot of buttercream! I used a basket weave for the brickwork around the castle walls and the weight piles on quickly. I ended up with a slightly simpler design than my original plan (VERY busy trying do work on the rest of the party as well as my cake) but I have decided that I LOVE chocolate garnishes! So elegant and pretty to look at, and I found very easy to work with and temper. I was very pleased with my first attempt at it (and did it ever save me time on my cake...instant stick on's and voila! an elegant cake with 1/2 the effort of detailed piped buttercream).
I had lots of extra chocolate, so I
made some fancy garnishes for my cupcakes (double chocolate...mmmm very
popular) and they instantly added spark to my table, definitely
something I will be adding to my repetoire! I can see them being
excellent for fancy christmas and new years parties or like my event an
addition to a birthday cake for those who don't enjoy icing as much but
want a sweet little something. 
Mina loved her Girly Girl Sugar Cookies, (so did her brother), flowers hearts, and circles, kept it simple...
