Monday 19 May 2014

Land Rover Defender Novelty Cake - Caking With Amy.....



Amy is a keen 15 yo baker, who until recently, has only been playing around with cupcakes. Last month - she came and spent an afternoon with me and made a large fondant covered cake for the first time.

Amy's cherry blossom cake is below. Pretty and a really nice job, especially for a beginner !


Couple of weeks later, Amy asked me if she could come for a day so I could help her make a  Land Rover Defender car cake. Well - to be honest, I'd never attempted a car cake..... so this really was a bit of a challenge...

The cake itself is a dense, chocolate brownie cake (8 x 12" lined tin), cut into layers and filled with chocolate ganache. Very, very rich - but a nice cake to work with and only small servings needed.

330g salted butter
330g dark chocolate
9 tsp instant coffee
250ml water
80g cocoa powder
380g self raising flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
720g caster sugar
6 large eggs
50ml vegetable oil
180g buttermilk / greek yogurt

Put the butter, chocolate, coffee and water in a pan and melt together to create a sauce. Set aside to cool.

Put eggs, oil and buttermilk in another bowl and combine. Add these to the cooled sauce.

Sieve all dry ingredients and mix together, then add wet mix and combine until no lumps are visible.

Bake in a preheated oven for 150deg C for 2 hours. 

Once cool, wrap and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight before splitting / carving.



I took a few photos along the way that may be helpful to Amy if she wants to make this cake again (or anyone else who fancies attempting a car cake)

First of all - google BLUE PRINTS and print / make a rough scale drawing of the car required.....

Here, there is a piece of foam core board, cut to shape and scale for the base. The foam core is wrapped in Baco Wrap and this board is on top of the cake drum to make it easier to move and work with.

My 8 x 12" cake was cut into 3 equal rectangles (8 x 4") and stacked. I'd already started shaping it before I thought of taking a photo. Sorry !

The bits cut of the front were kept and used later on as you'll see shortly. The cake was a little smaller than the finished size, as it still had to be coated / sealed in ganache on the outside.


Here is my rough drawing against the cake which is what I used when carving. From the picture below, I then took a slice off to get the angle for the windscreen. I did forget to angle to the roof though, and had to do that once the car was on the board.... before icing the roof. Pay to stand BACK and look !


Here you can see the front has been angled for the windscreen.


All ganched and wheel spacings cut out. Looks a bit like Postman Pat's van at this point....


Cake sat on board to get an idea of positioning. The cake scraps were roughly put in place to sit the front end of the car up - as if it is driving out of a muddy bog.


Cake off cuts ganached and on board - with a wedge to mount / raise up car.


Cake board front covered in fondant. I painted piping gel over this and covered with desiccated coconut which I'd coloured green and dried in the oven. 


The back part of the board got covered a little later in brown coloured fondant.


Side panel made out of modelling chocolate applied. There is a little strip of modelling chocolate under this along the centre line of the car to be able to dress the outer panel over and add shape.

The excess fondant for the windows was removed a little later.


A few more panels added, it's taking shape !

At this point, I then put the cake on the board and secured using a little piping gel to the fondant on the base. The front of the car roof underwent a little carving work to reshape as I noticed the error mentioned earlier.... then lights etc were added.

Hope this proves useful ! 

I certainly learnt a lot from it and know areas / ways to improve on for next time.

Sarah-Jane Nash, www.siliconemoulds.com - May 2014