cake decorating ideas?

beccatt

It's my grandpa's 80th at the weekend and about 15 family members are meeting up to celebrate. Months ago I volunteered to make a cake, then promptly forgot about it and now need to work fast!!
My gpa's a big amateur radio fan so I want to make a cake of a house roof with a ridiculous amount of aerials on it.
So far the plan is to make a coffee sponge as he likes them and to decorate it with butter icing. Not v sophisticated I know but it's more our taste than rolled icing or royal icing.
I was thinking of making two tray bake-sized sponges, then cut a roof angle into the top one and stick them together with more icing (or something else if anyone has any ideas?! There will be two children there so nothing too alcoholic!)

I've got some cake wires from the local decorations shop to mould the aerials around and will put some black thread between them as wires.

What I'm now wondering is what other things to put on the house? You won't be able to see anything beyond the top half of the windows but maybe I could do a rose climbing up the walls? Has anyone got ideas on how to colour icing for the roof? Can you use red colouring in coffee icing to get a clay tile colour? How can I do tiles on the roof? What about a chimney?

Also, how can I protect it during a car journey down to Oxford from Cheshire?

Any brainstorming ideas would be v welcome!!! And if anyone's got a housewarming party coming up it might be a good cake to make!

Rachel85

Mmm making me hungary..

For the roof I am sure you can add red (or perhaps brown) food colouring (or maybe chocolate) to the icing to make it go the colour you need. As for roof tiles, I would probably not do every tile, but just a few (so it kind of looks like an old cracked roof - does that make sense?!) You could either use writing icing, piped black icing or perhaps even liquorice (sp!) laces?

As for the roses up the sides you can get little roses for cake making from supermarkets, and you can also get green writing icing or green laces (not sure what flavout they're meant to be!) Perhaps add a little bird to the roof?!

I am sure if you google house birthday cake or go to your local library you'll be able to get some pictures that may give you inspiration

Sallys_Savings

how about if you could get a photo of your grandfather so hes looking out of the window?

and a few pigeons on the aerails?

beccatt

Thanks for those ideas! I love the idea of some birds on the roof!! And I really like the idea of having a picture of my grandpa looking out of the window - otherwise I thought I might buy a little toy man with moving legs and arms and have him climbing up a ladder to fix the aerial!

cboo

Hi

perfhaps you could use chocolate fingers for the roof and use some liquorice to jazz up the ariel..