Who's always cool and calm??? FIREMAN SAM

This is only a quick blog on Fireman Sam cake I did for the adorable Evan Murphy of Sixmilebridge. He gave me his surprised face and everything when he saw it!!

I used 2 x 10-inch tins filled with Mary Berry's Very Best Chocolate Fudge Cake mix. I doubled up the quantity of ingredients as Mary's recipe is for 8-inch tins (best to have too much than too little!!). After that was baked and cooled, I spread the left over chocolate butter cream I had from my Monkey Cake (see previous blog) over one half of the sponge cake. It dawned on me here that I needed to transfer it to a cake board, so I did this before I went any further, involving a slight breakage in the base layer....oops!! Tis gran though!

Then take the 2nd sponge cake and place on top of the base, so they are sandwiched together. I decided that Sam would stand out better against a white background, so I got out my trusty Betty Crocker's Vanilla Frosting (which I always keep stocked in the press) and spread this only around the top of the cake. This mixture is very creamy and goes on and off sometimes in the same spread, so don't be afraid to lump loads of it on there, and you can always level if off then. I coated the chocolate butter cream around the sides as the chocolate fudge cake would be too difficult to conceal around the edges with the vanilla icing. Now, you can also use the Betty Crocker's Chocolate Frosting for the filling and around the sides instead of making chocolate butter cream from scratch, but I had mine already made and left over from the Monkey Cake. In fairness that would be an easier thing to do all-in-all, just bear in mind that when it's fresh it's very gooey.

So now on to the main event: Sam!! I basically went online and got a picture of the good man himself (click here), scaled him down to the size I wanted on the cake, and printed him off. I then placed parchment paper, (or tracing paper if you had it) over his picture and traced him out. I traced out all his parts out separately, i.e. his head in one part of the paper, his jacket in another, etc, so I could use them as stand alone piece when cutting out of the different coloured fondant. Pure simple like!!

For the fondant I suggest taking a trip down to Homestore and More as they have all the baking stuff you'll need next. You get the ready to roll Fondant your icing colour gels ready. I would advise against using normal food colouring for dying fondant as it make it runny, so always use these gels with fondant. As always, wear clear gloves when mixing in the colours to the fondant (or else find somebody who doesn't mind having multicolored hands for a good month!!). With your gloves on and block of fondant in your hand, you mean business!! The largest piece of fondant is for his jacket so see what size you want Sam to be and work out how much fondant you will need, bearing in mind how much/thin it can roll it out to be.

So the main colours you need are: Navy, Yellow, Black, Yellow, Red and Ivory. When dying the fondant use a cocktail stick dipped in the tubs and rubbed on the fondant, little by little. You massage the piece of fondant like morla until you get the colour you want (say hello to carpel tunnel syndrome!!). For the Navy I would suggest dying the piece blue and adding the slightest bit of black to it to get it to shade you want. Now by all means you can just give Sam a blue jacket, he's hardly going to come after you with his fire hose!! The only tricky fondant piece is the face and hands; dying them ivory. This is a colour in the gel set I've mentioned above, but you could leave them white. Continue to dye all the relevant colours you need, according to Sam's picture. For his hair, I took some left over yellow and put a little bit of red with it to bring it to that kipper red!!! Roll out the coloured fondant pieces as you need them, cut around your stencil, and you have all your separate components lined up. This is where the very important edible glue comes in to play. With a thin paint brush (gotten in any stationary shop) in your hand and your glue, you can assemble each component together, i.e. hands to arms, nose to face, hat to head, etc. As the top of the cake is soft vanilla frosting you could just place all the components directly on to the cake and they will stick just as good. I referred to have him assembled beforehand and then plonk him on the cake top.

For the finer details, I made an indent in his jacket for the buttons, brushed a little glue in the indents, and dropped a decorating silver ball in to resemble the buttons. I painted on the blue and black on his eyes with a very thin brush, and a fierce steady hand. The name and age are just more coloured fondant rolled out cut in to letters and numbers, but you can pipe these on with butter cream if you want. I used icing modelling tools to make the lines in the pants, but that's just 'cos I was showing off at this point :)

And there you have it..........The Hero Next Door!!

Sam got a snazzy glitter belt!!