Apple Mac cake - Happy Birthday Bertie

My father in law has just bought himself a new Mac computer and he loves it.  He even brought it all the way down to Brighton to show it off at his last visit and has an Apple sticker in his car window he's so pleased with it.  So I thought it would be a great craic to make his birthday cake this year in the shape of the Apple logo.  It would also give me a chance to try out carving a cake for the first time which is another skill I want to get under my belt.
 
It would have been great to make it an apple flavour cake as well, but I thought it was best to stick to a cake that would stand up to being shaped so I opted for a traditional madeira cake, but coffee flavoured as I knew that was Bertie's favourite. 
 
I started off making a 9 inch madeira cake and left it overnight to settle and firm up.  I used the recipe in my Home Guide To Cake Decorating and substituted the milk for Camp Coffee Essence (note there is the typo in this book and the quantities for plain flour and self raising flour are the wrong way round!).  The next day I levelled the top and cut into 3 horizontal layers, then rebuilt it again upside down - this way, what was the bottom of the cake makes a perfectly flat top level.  For each layer I brushed on a little sugar syrup spiked with coffee licquer for flavour and moistness before smoothing over a layer of coffee buttercream.
 
I made a paper template of the logo and used that as a guide to cut out the shape of the cake, using my trusty serrated knife:
 

 
I realised it wasn't really much of a test of my carving skills and it was pretty easy as all I had to do was cut a straight line down from the paper template.  I think the real challenge is when you do proper 3D carving to create shapes like cars - I'll have to push myself next time.
 
I covered the carved cake in a thin layer of buttercream, which was a bit trickier than with a regular round or square cake trying to get it smooth and even into the inward shapes:
 

 

Next was a layer of marzipan:

 

 
Then I brushed the marzipan with a little leftover coffee sugar syrup to make the final layer of sugarpaste stick.   After smoothing on the sugarpaste I brushed with silver metallic lustre dust (I used this one by Rainbow Dust).  I covered a cake drum with white sugarpaste ready for the cake to sit on top then it dawned on me that I hadn't actually thought of a way to transfer the cake onto the drum.  Usually I use a thin cake board under the cake so it's easy to lift, but this one was an irregular shape so I couldn't use one.  So I sent out a panicked cry to Melissa for some moral support, then using two palette knives I lifted the cake onto the board.  Luckily it landed in the right place and didn't crack any of the icing.  Phew!

 

So here's the final cake - Bertie got the joke and all agreed it tasted great so I was really pleased.