I was asked by my surrogate daughter, (my work colleagues daughter who calls me her deputy mum), if I would make a birthday cake for her partner.
In all honesty I didn't really have much of a clue as to what to do but I thought I'd give it a try.
My idea was to bake a round cake and attach to that a little jetty on which a marzipan fisherman would sit with a rod in his hand with a fish attached. The cakeboard itself already being covered in icing which was washed with blue food colouring to look like water.
I made a fruit cake a few weeks before the party and had pierced the cake and had been brushing the cake with brandy then allowed it to dry.
I was worried about the icing, but as Jo, my surrogate daughter loved marzipan I decided to colour the marzipan and just use that instead.
At about the same time as I cooked the cake I modelled the fisherman out of coloured marzipan and in order to prevent it from sagging or falling forward I used spaghetti through several points on the body to hold the parts in place. I also modelled the jetty out of marzipan, 4 fish, several trees, bullrushes, a No Fishing sign and flowers and left them time to dry before they were needed.
I was very worried about the rolling of the marzipan and covering the cake and so I decided to cheat and after colouring the marzipan I placed the flattened lump between two sheets of greasproof paper then rolled it as thinly as it needed to be then unpeeled one side of the paper then placed this uncovered side onto the surface of the cake that I had previously brushed with melted apricot jam. It worked a treat!
The final decorations were placed on the cake at the hall so that the trees and No Fishing sign would not pull out of the cake (thet were held in place with spaghetti which were inserted into the models when they were made.
