Novelty and Fantasy Cakes Recipes - Flowerpot Cake

Ingredients

• Madeira cake, baked in a 1.2-liter pudding basin

• 175g jam

• 175g butter icing

• 30ml apricot jam, warmed and sieved

• 575g sugar paste icing

• 125g royal icing

• dark orange-red, red, silver, green, purple and yellow food coloring

• 2 chocolate flakes, coarsely crushed

• fine paintbrush

• wooden spoon

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Method:

1. Slice the cake into three layers and stick together again with jam and butter icing. Cut out a shallow circle from the cake top, leaving a 1cm rim. Brush the outside of the cake and rim with apricot jam. Tint 400g/14oz/2'h cups of the  sugar-paste orange-red and cover the cake, molding it over the rim. Reserve the trimmings. Leave to dry.

2. Use the trimmings to make decorations and handles for the flowerpot. Leave to dry on greaseproof paper. Sprinkle the chocolate flakes into the pot for soil.

3. Tint a small piece of sugar-paste very pale orange-red. Use to make a seed bag. When dry, paint on a pattern in food coloring. Tint two small pieces of icing red and silver. Make a trowel and dry over a wooden spoon handle.

4. Tint the remaining icing green, purple and a small piece yellow. Use to make the flowers and leaves, attaching together with royal icing. Score leaf veins with the back of a knife. Leave to dry on greaseproof paper.

5. Attach all the decorations to the flowerpot and arrange the plant, seed bag and trowel with soil, seeds and grass made from leftover Tinted sugar-paste.