Tardis Cake

A while back Tracy asked me to do a cake for her husband Sam's 40th birthday.  She specially requested a Tardis cake.  Never heard of Tardis before, ever!  I've never seen an episode of Doctor Who before, so it would explain my poor education on the show.  All I had to do was Google "Tardis Cake" and a plethora of pictures and links popped up.

Fast forward to three days ago, I started really looking to see how I was going to create this cake.  Fortunately for Pinterest I was able to find this FANTASTIC Tardis Cake Tutorial and I was set.  

Amazingly, I read through the whole tutorial far in enough in advance that I had time to do the base of the cake.  I used a 12" thick white board from Flour Confections and followed the instructions in the tutorial.  This took me 15 minutes to do on Thursday night.  I was super excited with the results.  I put it away from the wandering paws of the cats dry for two days.  This was my first time painting on fondant and it is super easy.  I can't wait to paint on another cake soon.

For the cake itself I made a recipe and a half of the Perfect Chocolate Cake to divide into six square 6" layers.  A little time consuming when you only have two 6" pans which is why I am so glad I baked on Thursday night instead of procrastinating to Friday evening!  I put the six layers on a cooling rack in the fridge over night to get really firm.

For the icing I made a combination of the PCC chocolate icing and butter cream.  Then I set about assembling the cake.  Basically, I made three sandwiches of cake, icing and cake.  With the first two layers together, I put a thin layer of icing on top then insert five straws through the cake and trimmed them at the same height of the cake.  On top of that I place a 6" square thin board with the corners rounded off.  Next, I repeated the same steps for second "sandwich".  Once all three sandwiches were stacked I covered the cake in icing and kept it as straight as possible.  You can see the line of each board faintly in the picture to give you an idea of how it is divided.  

I could have stacked three layers then put in the support straws with a board and the remaining three layers on top. But the cake needed to server 50-55 people.  This way, at serving time the cake could be dismantled into three 6" two layer cakes which would yield 54 1" x 2" servings.

I loosely followed the tutorial from this point to decorate the cake.  I rolled out and trimmed the four sides and top, then cut out four 1.5" x 10" strips to cover the corners.  For the windows and panels, I did not at a second layer of fondant as in the tutorial (tutorial actually used modeling chocolate).  Instead I used a 1.25" square cookie cutter to press into the fondant.  I did use black dye to paint the windows.  For the window p I cut out eight squares in whote then took the next cutter down in size to cut out the frame. Next, I cut out three strips for each window.  The black was still wet so the white easily stuck on.  

In the tutorial there is a link for the decals that I added.  Mine were not printed on edible paper, but can be peeled off.  For the light on top I found that idea from another picture I found on Pinterest.  

The cake took about 4 hours to decorate this morning at a very leisurely pace.  Mr. T got to sleep in since Miss E is visiting her grandparents. 

I enjoyed making this cake and I might even sit down and watch a few episodes of Dr. Who to see what this Tardis is all about! 

Happy Birthday Sam!  Hope you have a great day celebrating and enjoy eating the cake.