Dad's VW Cake

Recently I have been quite unwell and unable to create cakes to the standard that I would like, however, with a lot of help, I made my dad his birthday cake last weekend. My dad has always been a great VW supporter and used to love his camper van and seeing loads come down to Brighton the weekend before inspired me to make him a camper van cake. It was a very simple idea, create a rectangle and decorate it. 

I order to make the cake, my husband and I, made a sponge mixture with a bit of mixed spice in it and baked it in a square dish. When cooled and at my parents, I cut this into 3 sections, piled 2 on top of each other and then the 3rd piece was cut to make the cake slightly longer. 

I made some lemon buttercream to hold the cake together, using butter, icing and lemon juice and then applied this over the whole cake to create a sticky surface for the icing. 

We rolled out the icing and covered the whole cake with white as our base layer. Then coloured another piece red which was to be stuck, using edible glue, around the bottom of the cake and shaped into a V on the front. I also coloured some icing black for the wheels and the VW badge (which I cut using a sharp knife) and some grey for the windows. Mum made a bumper out of some more black and we made some flowers for the roof using purple and my new cutters. 

Side View

Flower Power

VW badge on the front

Overall the van was recognisable but did look rather like a collapsed camper van rather than a fully functioning one. If I had more time and energy I would have made this more uniform and neat, however, I was happy with the end result as was my dad. 

Next up is my mum's birthday at the beginning of November, let's hope I start feeling better by then and am able to put more effort into hers.