Something Retro This Way Comes

Sometimes it's hard to come up with a project name when you are baking for people who read The BaKerry, this was one of them, even though the recipient of this cake - my big sister - had made a very unsubtle hint about wanting this design, I still wanted it to be a surprise.

I faced a few problems whilst making this cake, the first of which came up during the planning stages - would it be better to do a three layer cake on it's side, or a several layer cake that would be more stable but difficult to cut up for people to eat. I decided to go for the former and face the challenge - next time, it would have looked better if I had done the multiple layers though.

The Project: Something Retro This Way Comes
The Theme: A Red Phonebox
Ingredients:
For the Cake:
12oz Self Raising Flour
12oz Margarine
12oz Sugar
6 eggs
2oz Cocoa Powder
For the Icing:
Nutella
Butter Icing
1 Pack of Royal Icing
Red Colouring Paste
Black Colouring Paste
Green Colouring Paste
Black Edible Ink Pen

I made this cake as a chocolate cake with chocolate hazelnut butter icing in the middle (hence the Nutella in the ingredients list). I baked the cake in a rectangular tin and cut it into three. I then did the usual with the shaping butter icing and cake crumbs to increase the stability of the cake

Whilst it was drying out, I coloured the red icing. I covered the cake slightly differently than I usually would, usually I try and cover it with one whole piece of icing to avoid doing as many joins as possible. For this cake, I covered each side at a time and the top last. Thankfully I did not have to worry about the joins too much, because the edges are covered with more red anyway - yay!

Once covered, I rolled strips of red for each corner edge of the cake and stuck them down. I also created a strip of rolled red icing to go between where the sign and the door will go

The next step involved creating a dark grey icing colour for the windows in the door. I wanted to make the windows first and carve out the door around it afterwards. For the below, I rolled out a rectangle of the grey icing and made red strips to lay over the top.

Once secure, I was able to then carve out the door frame and make a little postbox too. Using some of the white royal icing, I made the signs for each side. I used the black edible ink pen (yes I bought another one!) to write Telephone onto the sign - it was less fiddly than creating letter shapes that small. 

Because I was basing this phonebox on a particular one (that still stands in the little hamlet where my family used to live), which is surrounded by grass and trees on the side of a quiet countryside road; I wanted to cover the bottom of the phonebox in grass. Cutting pieces of white icing in the shape of grass and applying it to the cake, I then used the green colouring paste to paint onto the grass, giving it a nice effect with the different greens

Overall, I was quite pleased. As I said at the beginning, I would do it slightly differently with the cake layering if I ever had to make one of these (or something similar) again, even if it means that people have a seven layered cake :)

Total Time Spent: 4 hours
Useful Tips Gained: Stop thinking ahead about how the cake will be eaten
Items to Purchase: Fine, I've added an Icing Smoother to my Amazon Basket - no more moaning about an Icing Smoother in this section!
Items Added to Amazon Wishlist: Cake Cutting Wire - it just looks like something I need in my life!!
Miscellaneous Items Wished For: More edible pens, I think the possibilities are endless for these with cake decorating, so many finer details that are easier to do because of them!