They’re confectionary castles for the tiniest of Winter Carnival kings and queens.
To mark the St. Paul Winter Carnival and St. Paul’s lovely Rice Park ice palace, we unveiled our first-ever Cool Castle Contest. In the spirit of the annual Pioneer Press Peeps Diorama Contest, we asked you to build a palace or whatever structure you could dream up, using sugar cubes, marshmallows or other edibles. (Glue was certainly acceptable.)
More than 90 of you responded.
Entrants used sugar cubes, Marshmallow Fluff, icing, chocolate, doughnuts, candy canes, Twinkies, Rice Krispies bars, gum, nuts, ice cream cones, pretzels, cereal and coconut. Even a few veggies — broccoli, celery — for trees.
Submissions came from artisans, kids, school groups, an assisted living center and a rehab center.
FIRST PLACE: ANDREA WAMBOLD
“It’s only fitting that the first Cool Castle Contest has a replica honoring the first Winter Carnival Ice Palace,” Wambold, of Eagan, wrote in her submission. She’s referring to the Winter Carnival creation of 1886, and she included a photo of it, noting that this original ice palace was one of the first buildings in St. Paul to have electric lighting.
This extremely patient artist described her process:
“My sugar cube castle was created using about 1,660 sugar cubes from two different makers. My construction tip: The key to authentic-looking walls is being able create half sugar cubes to achieve the staggered-block effect.” Her method of splitting the cubes is a “trade secret,” she says, in case she enters next year. (We hope she does.) Secret, too, is her method for backing the walls from the inside, to stabilize them but still allow light to show through.
Wambold guessed that she created the palace in 20 hours over 10 days. But she spent an additional six hours on one of her passions, photography — which can be key.
“So my kitchen was a construction zone and my dining room was a photo studio,” she said.
She said she kept a handheld vacuum handy as sugar cubes crumbled in the gluing process. And her kids kept her on the task when she wanted to give up, she said. She’s glad they did.
SECOND PLACE: SARAH FIFER AND VERONICA STARZINSKI
For their piece, “St. Paul Suites Palace,” Fifer and Starzinski put in more 23 hours over three days. They used around 3,000 sugar cubes. “Then we bonded it together with vanilla frosting,” Starzinski said.
The entire thing is edible. Except you might not want to bite into the pile of cold, cooked angel hair pasta forming the hill. But the white M&Ms and white Kit Kats — delicious. You could even grab a cough drop from it in a pinch.
“We ate basically everything,” Starzinski said. “We laughed ourselves silly.”
Two special nods to winter are a loon, shaped from dough, and a toboggan of sculpted caramel. There is also a maze, a Graham cracker trail and a pretzel bridge.
The two creatives often do projects together. But for side gigs, Fifer upholsters and Starzinski restores vintage toys, selling new-and-improved Barbie dolls and My Little Ponies on eBay.
THIRD PLACE: MICHELLE LARSON AND JOANNA CAHN
This South St. Paul team worked some 30 hours to shape their replica Cathedral of St. Paul. They used sugar cubes, chocolate domes and cooked their own hard-candy “stained glass” for the windows.
“We were looking for an awesome, iconic St. Paul structure for the contest,” said Cahn, who credits Larson as the creative force behind the project, the “crafty” one.
“It has sugar cubes for the brick structure. The domes are made from chocolate; the roof is made of Wheat Chex. Even the cross on top is linguini,” Cahn said.
They used powdered sugar for snow and broccoli trees. They even lit the inside with remote-control lights to show off those stained-glass windows.
PEOPLE’S CHOICE: ROSARIA VALLES
Rosaria, who is turning 9 on Super Bowl Sunday, drew the most viewers’ votes with her sugar cube-and-candy cane castle with skating cheddar penguins. Rosaria, who had technical assistance from her GraGra and Papa Joe, also made liberal use of frosting and used pretzels and licorice for the drawbridge and cotton candy for Christmas trees.
“Cheddar penguins are skating on blue frosting ice … and gummy bears are watching,” she said.
“It was hard to stop decorating once we started!” Rosaria, who lives in North St. Paul, wrote in her submission.
The Eagle Point Elementary School third-grader said she didn’t eat any of the sweets during construction.
Copyright 2018 Pioneer Press.