Nerdy Baked goods!
About this time of year I get an urge to go all domestic and do some cooking. So it’s probably a good time to start the series on baking for nerd-tastic occasions.
Today we will be making a simple TARDIS shaped cake.
Please note: the recipe contains raw eggs which make it unsuitable for pregnant women.
The base is a simple sponge I favour this receipe but you can pretty much alter this to suit your own tastes:
Ingredients: Makes one 20 cm / 8 in cake
100 g/4 oz butter or margarine, softened
100 g/4 oz caster (superfine) sugar
100 g/4 oz self-raising (self-rising) flour
2.5 ml/0.5 tsp baking powder
Grated rind of 1 lemon
15 ml/1 tbsp lemon juice
2 eggs
Method:Blend together all the ingredients until well mixed. Spoon into a greased and lined 20 cm/8 in cake tin (pan) and bake in a preheated oven at 180°C/350°F/gas mark 4 for 30 minutes until well risen and springy to the touch.
Obviously given that the TARDIS is rectangle the cake tin should be square as well.
When the cake comes out leave it to cool completely, don’t be tempted to start working on while it’s still hot or even warm it will just make the rest a lot more difficult.
From the top end of the cake (the short side of the rectangle) cut a slice to make the top edge blunter and set the cut piece aside, you will need it later.
Now lay the cake with the broad side facing upwards and use the trim the cut piece so it is short than the original width of the cake and place it back where you cut it from. I use a lemon drizzle glaze to hold it in place but jam works just as well.
You should end up with something that looks like this:
Now for the icing
Ingredients:
1 egg white
450g. icing sugar
50g. liquid glucose
Flavoring and coloring
Method:
Sift the icing sugar into a basin. Make a bay in the centre and add the softened glucose, egg white and flavoring. Beat, drawing the icing sugar into the centre until the mass is a stiff paste. Turn on to a board, which has been lightly dusted with sifted icing sugar, and knead into a paste.
Next knead the colouring into the icing as required and I tend to flavour the icing in a complementary manner to the cake so I go for white chocolate, vanilla, or lemon generally. Whatever you don't use can be frozen and used for another cake!
Working with fondant icing can be a pain as it tends to stick so make sure you have plenty of extra icing suger on hand to ‘flour’ your working board with it to prevent this as much as possible.
Colour a fair amount of icing blue for the skin of the ship itself, the exact amount will depend on how thick or thin you want the icing to be. With this cover the entire shape of the cake and cut two extra long strip sections of blue for the door frame, a strip the same width as the cake, and 8 squares for the panels on the front. Liquid glucose or water (I use the lemon glaze) can be used to affix these extra sections to the base icing.
Once these are in place you will need a small amount of white icing (which can be pulled off the main ball before you add the blue colouring) for the windows, police box sign, and door sign. The windows and door sign should be a little smaller than the size of the blue door panels.
You sould be left with this:
The final section requires patience, a steady hand, a toothpick, and a paint brush! With the toothpick, draw small lines down the two side columns, panes on the windows and write on the police sign and door sign. Next mix a little water with a small amount of black food colouring and with a very fine NEW artists paint brush dab or paint small amounts of colouring into the grooves you made with the toothpick. The grooves will take the colour and stop it from bleeding into the rest of the icing. I added a jelly to the top for the light on the TARDIS roof, and any other decoration is pretty spiffy as well.
What you should be left with is this:
