Beach Birthday Cake

So I have not blogged for a long long time because I have just been busy and trying to job hunt etc.

Anyway its my dads birthday today and last night my sister and I made him a cake. My dad loves the seaside and deck chairs and we had thought about making him a deckchair cake but I am afraid that my cake making skills are not that advanced yet. So we opted for a circle, chocolate double sponge, half covered in sand and the other covered in sea. We went on eBay and found a doll sized deckchair, beach ball and we also found a kitsch, vintage, seagull broach which we put on wire and stuck into the cake. Oh and we also got some cocktail umbrellas and made a little sandcastle with a flag. I will go through what we did exactly:

1. So we started by baking 2 sponge cakes just plain chocolate. Sandwiched them together with jam, and put on a silver cake base/stand.

2. We then blitzed/crushed a packet of digestive biscuits until it was like fine sand.

3. Warmed up apricot jam and brushed over the side we wanted to be the beach including the edges of the cake. We then sprinkled the crumbled biscuits on top the areas we had covered in jam. It got really messy but we just used a brush to dust any excess of the cake base.

4. Next we made butter icing with butter and icing sugar and added blue food colouring until we got the colour we wanted. We then covered the other half of the cake in the icing and made a wave affect where the icing met the sand so it looked a bit like crashing waves.

5. We used a cube of sponge and covered in jam and crushed biscuits to create a sandcastle. To make the flag we used a cocktail stick and tissue paper. The cocktail stick also helped keep the sandcastle stable.

6. We then just arranged the deckchair, sandcastle, umbrella and beach ball where we wanted.

7. For the seagull we attached wire around the fastening of the broach and just stuck into the cake.

8. To finish we found a happy birthday plastic cake decoration and put it in the sea. Which we thought added a retro, kitsch seaside postcard scene, scenario.

9. We then just cleaned up the base of any icing or crumbs.

VOILA... seaside, beach retro cake.... well our interpretation   :)