Console Cake!

My favourite TARDIS console (from the 1996 TV Movie) in cake form!

To compare here’s a picture I drew of the console (apparently there are none in the WHOLE of the internet!):

And a real pic (unfortunately my cake doesn’t come with Paul McGann):

Time And Relative Dimension in Sugar

This week I made a TARDIS cake for my cousin for his 11th birthday. I’ve been debating whether to post it here for a couple of days because I’m not overally happy with it (it all went a little bit Pete Tong) and there are much better examples out there, but I’ve had some lovely feedback from people on twitter so I figured what the hell.

Also if you’re attempting to make your own TARDIS cake after seeing this then I guess it will help you to avoid the mistakes that I made.

So here’s the final product, I dressed the cake up with a Gallifrey background and little gingerbread Doctors to a) finish it off nicely and b) distract from the fat TARDIS

Evidently I need to brush up on my transdimensional mechanics to get the outside smaller than the inside Wonder if there’s anything about that in @DoktorWatson‘s  cookbook? http://twitpic.com/1c045w

For those of you interested in how I made it:

• I baked a normal sponge cake in a square tin, cut it in half and placed one half on top of the other using cream and jam to join them (i.e. a Victoria sponge)
• I then placed the cake in the freezer for about 20 minutes. This makes the cake easier to cut and shape when making a cake like this.
• When taken out of the freezer I turned the cake on its end (so the layers were vertical instead of hortizontal on a normal cake) and levelled it out, cutting it into a oblong, TARDIS like shape.
• I then coloured some fondant icing and cut out the shape of the TARDIS and stuck it to the cake with cream. Use a little water to go over joins in the icing.
• Using another sponge cake I had baked and frozen for 20 mins I cut out the top section of the TARDIS and wrapped it in blue fondant icing and placed it on top – this is where the cake decided it would buckle and from there on out it was a bit of a struggle to keep the thing standing.
• There are 2 main reasons I’m guessing that the cake collapsed. 1) the cake was freshly baked. I would suggest baking the cake at least a day before building up the cake and icing it. 2) I used vertical layers. I would suggest using thin, horizontal layers to avoid this.
• In the end I took off the top of the cake and reinforced the base with straws (these are better to use that wooden splints/skewers, especially if the cake is for a child).
• When I fixed it as much as I could (and after much stressing and swearing, I might add) I decorated the rest of the TARDIS using coloured fondant icing for the details (the sign, the light etc) and stuck them on with water. I finished it off by writing the signs and drawing the window details with icing pens.

Well, I hope that helps! If you do have any questions about how I made the cake/decorated it you can comment on this post and I’ll reply or alternatively you can say hello on twitter ( @Nelle_Macbeth)

P.S Massive thanks goes out to Ingrid who gave me all her fondant icing and colouring materials and also helped me to save the cake from being a complete disaster and refused to let me give up. Thank yoooooou!!!! xxx