I know, I know, but what about copyright? Here is the groovy thing about this cake. It's just a Kent Police Box. Yup, these exist in real life in the UK. As real Police Boxes. So while we know that this is "Dr. Who" there is no copyright on a Kent Police Box. I was as thrilled as can be when I found this out!
Now, how to make this. It was certainly not easy and it was all due to the fondant. As I have mentioned before, I don't make my own red, black or blue fondant. It takes too much dye which changes the taste too much. Duff's fondant, comes in all sorts of wonderful colors and tastes wonderful too so when I need any of those three above mentioned colors I go to Duff's. However...and here is the sticking point...Duff's is really really...did I mention "really"?....SOFT. When covering a cake or making snakes for filigree it is a wonderful thing to work with. It's smooth and soft and wonderful. Except when you need it to be stiff. Then it's a nightmare to work with. But here is how I made do.
I started off with a 10x10x2 inch cake and cut it directly in equal halves. Then I filled it, stacked it and crumb coated it as always which then made it a 10x5x5 inch cake. In this case it was a yummy marble cake with vanilla buttercream filling. Then I started out covering each side of the cake with a thin panel. Knowing how soft the fondant is I wanted to give it a bit more base for me to work upon. I also had the idea that I could put the "doors" on and then mark the panels with it on the cake. Nope. Once I had the base layer of fondant on the cake I added the thicker "door" layer. Unfortunately the first time I tried to emboss a panel onto the door the cookie cutter slid right through the soft fondant to the crumbcoat layer. After three tries at this I gave up and made the doors with the panels on a matt and then attached those to the cake. This meant that while the embossing went well, the attaching left for some not so straight lines. After working on this for 2 hours I was happy with a few crooked lines! LOL!
Once I got the paneled doors on I did cut out the top sections for the windows, added white fondant in place of the blue and then used very thin strips to frame the "windows". For the base I just cut a slightly larger "slab" of fondant so it would stick out a bit and then trimmed the entire frame with more thick strips. Finally I was to the top. I didn't want to make that out of cake so I decided to mold the fondant. Yes, I'm a bit slow and figured this would be easy. Nope. Not so. Why? You guessed it, the fondant is SOFT. UGH! Ok, so I very slowly took my time, laid down the base slab and then started molding the top "hat" looking piece. I finally had to make it taller and thinner than I wanted it to be because the soft fondant kept settling as it dried a bit. I let it sit for 3 hours and then added it to the top of the cake and then, like the doors and base, trimmed it out with some thick strips. The light at the top was fairly easy. I rolled out an "egg" of white fondant then gently tapped one end flat. Then I put a few crisscross straps of black as the "cage" for the light and finally a bit of blue on top for the cap. I used a toothpick on the flat end to stick it into the top "hat" part of the building. I then used a thick snake of black fondant to add the number 6 to the bottom of the TARDIS and some thinner snakes to spell out the wording on the cake board.
Here came the hardest part. The signs. I have a Cricut Cake machine. This cuts out wonderful letters for me...until you get under 1/2 inch. Then I have to pipe any lettering I need. I have mentioned before that this is my weakness when it comes to caking. I'm not great at piping lettering. I seriously dreaded doing this piping so it was the very very last thing I did. The "big" letters are only a quarter of an inch tall and the little ones about 1/16th of an inch tall. So I rolled out the big blue slab base for the sign and added that to the cake. Then rolled out a slightly smaller piece of black fondant and let it set out and dry up a bit. The last thing I wanted to do is have that black piece be too wobbly when I went to place it on the cake and have all my lettering crack! So let this piece get really hard. I added a ton, not literally, of tylose to my black to make it really firm before rolling it out. Once I could pick it up without it bending I took a deep breath and began piping...and got it on the FIRST TRY! Yup, I was estatic...right until I put it on the cake and smudged a letter and then had to repipe that letter on the cake. SIGH. Things don't always go perfectly. The really sad news is that I had three, yes, three of these identical signs to pipe and the front sign to pipe as well. It was a long afternoon.
As always, the payoff was seeing the birthday girl's face when she saw her cake, watching her pull everyone over to see it as they arrived for the party, and hearing all of her friends ooooo and ahhhh over it. Worth every second of soft fondant and piping that I went through.
Happy Birthday again Sarah! I know you had a wonderful time and I am so happy you loved your Dr. Who TARDIS cake!
Next week I have a totally adorable Shower Cake to share with you! See you then!
Cat
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