Beach Huts Cake

This week I have been working on a beach house cake.  It has been loads of fun!  I was making a birthday cake for a lady who was celebrating her 60th.  I was initially asked for a victoria sponge cake with 'Happy Birthday' written on it.  However, as her favourite place to go is Whitstable, the birthday lady's daughter and I decided that this should be included in the design on the cake....and then one thing led to another...

For the innards of this cake, I used a wonderful madeira cake recipe as well as some priceless tips from Lindy's Cakes. There is so much useful information on Lindy's blog, not to mention all the beautiful cakes.

As you can see from the pic of the naked cake below, it rose beautifully and there was no sinkage/dome to contend with, which can often happen if the cake doesn't cook evenly.  This time, I did as Lindy suggested, which was to not only double line the cake tin with baking parchment but also to wrap the outside of the tin with brown paper.  It was some very cosy looking cake batter.  

The cake was filled with vanilla buttercream and covered with sugar paste.

To make the beach huts, I carved little hut shapes out of sugar paste and then covered them with very thin strips of coloured paste.  It took ages...

My final addition to the cake was some teeny weeny footprints...

Finally, while researching beach huts, I came across this incredible design competition where entrants had to try and re-think the traditional beach hut.  Have a gander here