Sandcastle Cake

For this cake you will need, shell moulds (these can be shaped by hand if preferred) coloured straws, edible glue, 10" round cake drum and coloured ribbon.

To bake the cakes, pre-heat the oven to 180°C (Fan 160°C/gas 4). Grease two 6" sandwich tins and two 8" sandwich tins then line the base of each tin with baking parchment.

For the 6" cake, beat together the butter, sugar, eggs, flour and baking powder until fully incorporated, then split the mixture evenly between the two tins and level out. Repeat this process for the 8" cake.

Bake the cakes for 20 minutes (6" cake) and 25 minutes (8" cake)

To make the buttercream soften the butter and gradually beat in the icing sugar and vanilla bean paste, adding a few teaspoons of milk if required to loosen slightly. Mix well together; beating with an electric mixer will help ensure it is light and fluffy.

Split each of the cakes and fill with your choice of buttercream flavour. Secure the 8” round cake onto the drum, positioning it slightly off centre towards the back of the board. Sit the 6” cake on top and cover both with a generous layer of buttercream all over. To create the door, roll out a long sausage of sugar paste and shape into an arch, this needs to be stuck onto the buttercream. A small block of sugar paste will form a turret and should be positioned on top of the cake. Again cover with buttercream.

 

To make the sand covering crush the biscuits in a food processor until they are in fine crumbs and mix together with the sugar. Gently press and sprinkle the ‘sand’ onto the cake trying to ensure a good and even coverage.

To make the shells, use a mould or shape freehand with modelling paste before leaving to dry. Once dry, dust with pearl and cream lustre to create realistic markings and colourings on the shells. Add to the base of the cake.

To make the pink and orange pinwheel: colour x2 50g balls of flower paste by kneading a small amount of food colouring gel into the flower paste until evenly distributed.

 

Roll out the orange balls of flower paste into a small square approximately 4mm thick on a non-stick board. Split the pink coloured ball in half, keeping one half aside, roll out the other half into a thin square to approximately 2mm. Slice the rolled out pink icing into 5mm strips, these will form the stripes on your pin wheel.

Lay the strips of thin pink paste on top of the orange square, leaving approximately 10mm between each stripe. These can be secured in place by lightly brushing the back of the pink strips with boiled water.  Gently roll over the orange square with a rolling pin to flatten the pink strips until smooth and the orange square is approximately 2mm thick.

Using the remaining leftover pink icing, roll it out into a 2mm square (the same size as the orange square) and brush with boiled water. Place the orange square (with the stripes facing upwards) on top of the pink square and secure them together. Trim the rough edges until the decoration resembles a 3 inch square.

Gently using a sharp knife, cut diagonal lines from each corner about 2/3 towards the centre of the square. Put a small dab of edible glue, boiled water or royal icing in the centre of the square and gently fold the top left corner of the square into the centre.  Repeat with alternating corners.

Roll a small ball of flower paste and secure in the centre of the pinwheel with edible glue before leaving to dry. Repeat the whole process with different colours to make more pin wheels.  Once the pinwheels have been left to dry, turn them over and use more edible glue to fix the flattened end of a drinking straw to the back of the pinwheel. Leave to completely dry (preferably overnight) before pushing into the cake to decorate.

Add a brightly coloured ribbon around the drum to finish.