Sandy Hargrave Tel: 970 927-5450

Fruit Cake Ingredients

Note: Treacle is an English product it is a type of dark molasses, there is no substitute as far as taste goes, but using a corn syrup will work.

Method

Soak the fruit in brandy for twenty four hours. Before starting mixing make sure you have lined the correct tin and turned on the oven. 150°C / 300°F / Gas mark 2.

Make sure the butter is left out of the fridge for a while before use, this will help stop the mixture from curdling later when adding the eggs. The eggs should also be at room temperature before using them and not taken straight from the fridge.

Place the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl and cream on low and add the treacle. Add the eggs gradually so that the mixture does not curdle. Sieve the spices and the flour together and add gradually then add the fruit and combine all the ingredients thoroughly. Place the batter in the prepared baking tin and tap on the counter top to level the mixture. Place in the middle of your oven, for the time stated for the tin size.

When the cake is done cool a little and then add the brandy or rum by making holes in the cake with a skewer and pouring the liquor in the holes. Wrap the cake in greaseproof paper and leave to mature for a few weeks before decorating.

Butter Cream Chocolate

Ingredients

(Makes enough to cover and fill a 22 cm (9 inch) round cake) 125 g (4 oz) unsalted butter, softened

250 g (8 oz) icing sugar

2 teaspoons boiling water

30 g (1 oz) sifted cocoa powder

Method

Beat the butter with electric beaters until light and fluffy. Gradually add the icing sugar, beating well after each addition. Add the water and the sifted cocoa powder and beat well. Can be frozen for up to 3 months. Defrost in the fridge for a day before using.

The television cake depicted above is actually quite simple, but the thing to remember is that the cake is standing up, and it must be able to support its own weight. As such I would make a fruit cake and make the screen part of the cake a 14inch cake and about 4 inches deep.

Ingredients

14 x 12 inch oblong deep fruit cake

7inch round fruit cake cut into a third to give the partial circle shape for the aerial.

4 lbs Dark purple rolled fondant icing colored blue and a little red.

2 lbs silver rolled fondant icing use white colored with a little gray.

Chocolate butter cream for the black parts

Cover the whole of the back the cake and three sides with the dark purple icing, Cut three strips about an inch an a half or two inches for the fascia which is purple at the front. Adhere this with royal icing. Write your message on the front with a straight small tip.

The weight of the "aerial" in this cake worries me as a construction model and I would be tempted to use two small bamboo poles of the type used to tie up tomato plants. These I would cover with a chocolate butter cream and stick into the portion of circular fruitcake, and then I personally would use marshmallows for the tips, if you cannot purchase any large enough I would make a fondant marshmallow icing and place this at the tip of the antennae.

Go from Adult Birthday Cake Decorating Idea to CakeChannel.com Home