Dr Who Tardis Cake - Happy Birthday Lula

Last week set a pretty impressive record for the furthest distance anyone has travelled for a Brighton Bakery cake.  A very nice man called Phil lives in Rome found us online and ordered a cake for his goddaughter's birthday.  Unfortunately I couldn't persuade him to cover the plane fare for me to deliver it to him in Italy  as he was coming to Brighton for the birthday party that just so happened to be only two streets away from us.

The birthday girl Lula is a big fan of Doctor Who, and after discussing a few ideas Phil decided to go for a cake in the shape of the Tardis:

I was really looking forward to making this one, but it wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be. 

I started off with an 8" square chocolate cake, which I levelled and filled with chocolate buttercream:

I put the cake in the fridge for a couple of hours to firm up so that it would cut more easily.
I then made a template for the shape of the Tardis and used it to cut the cake:

And then used the offcut to create the top:

I created a a base out of card covered with foil the same shape as the Tardis, and secured the pieces of cake with buttercream:

Then it was time to get busy with the buttercream, which I smoothed in a thin layer all over the cake so that the sugarpaste would stick.  The cake then went into the fridge to firm up for an hour or so.

Meanwhile I coloured the sugarpaste and covered the board.  I wanted it to look like the Tardis was flying through space so I mixed several different colours into the black to create a marbled effect, although the predominant colour that came out when I rolled it was the white which looks like a cloud of smoke which I quite like:

Once the buttercream on the cake had firmed up I covered it with a layer of blue sugarpaste and trimmed the edges:

I then created panels for each of the sides and the top and cut out rectangles.  This was much trickier than I thought it would be as sugarpaste pulls out of shape when you cut it with a knife, and if you use a cutting wheel it is very difficult to get neat corners.  I wish I had a rectangular cookie cutter as I think that would have been the best tool for the job.  I fixed the panels on with edible glue and added in the windows and the poster which had the tiniest writing I've ever done on a cake before.

The finishing touches I added were a base, the light on top of the Tardis, which was secured with a short piece of dry spaghetti, and the black sign for each side.  I painted on the writing on the sign with Superwhite powder mixed with a tiny amount of vodka.

And to finish the cake off, I added some silver lustre dust and red glitter to give it a little space sparkle:

Even though it took longer than I thought it would, I love making 3D cakes and think it turned out well.  I hope Lula liked her birthday surprise of her own personalised Tardis and had a very happy 10th birthday.