A friend of mine (who I’ve known since I was a single-digit-aged-kid) asked me to make a cake for her daughter’s middle school graduation party. The party was Dr. Who themed, and she asked for a sheet cake with some sort of Dr. Who decorations on top. Instantly I got a mental image of some cake you’d buy at the local grocery store that had random Dr. Who figures shoved into the icing and some hand written sentiment on top. This cake would be easy to make…no problem at all!

…and then…my imagination took over. I was talking to my husband (whom I bounce most of my culinary ideas off of) about the cake and as we were discussing how I should decorate it, out came the idea to make the entire cake look like the Tardis. I won’t lie, I was excited and hesitant all at once thinking about it. I’ve watched a billion cake shows to have an idea of what I’d need to do, but I was a little nervous to attempt it. I mulled it over for a few days. I have never made cakes professionally, it has always been just a hobby of mine, so I wanted to make sure I did it correctly and didn’t have a disaster that’d put a damper on the graduation party.

The day came when I needed to go get my supplies and actually decide what the cake was going to look like. After walking around Michael’s for what felt like days, I chickened out and decided to make it a sheet cake with a fondant Tardis on top. As I was getting ready to check out, I saw a cake pan that was the perfect size and shape for a Tardis. As I walked closer to look at it, I saw a sale tag on it. Oh no! Do I dare?! I called my husband, I needed to talk it through with someone. Our phone conversation was done and I was now on my way to attempt to make a 3D Tardis cake. Eeek! Can I really pull this off?!

I arrived home and immediately began sketching out what the cake was going to look like. Then came the baking. I made 10 – 10×10 cakes. I wasn’t sure how many I’d really end up needing, so I made quite a few. Extra is always better than not enough.

Then onto the buttercream…oh the buttercream! I made so much buttercream! My Kitchen Aid Mixer, which I’ve affectionately named Ameila (as in Amelia Bedelia), was whirring away whipping the icing together as I tried so hard to contain puffs of powdered sugar coming out the side.

Cakes were baked and cooled, the buttercream was made. Now was time to start assembling it. I began to stack and stack and stack layers of cake until it reached a height that I was happy with.

To give the cake some extra support I placed 4 support skewers near the corners of each double layer, then placed a cardboard cake base on top, then another double layer of cake sat on that. I kept that pattern going until I reached the last layer.

I let that sit in the refrigerator to firm up for a few hours before I started to do anything else. Next up was dirty icing the cake.

Once that step was done, I let it rest and set up before I started applying fondant.

Next up was decorating the cake. There was blue fondant as far as the eyes could see. I rolled and rolled and rolled. I then started to cut and decorate…

I made the roof out of Rice Crispy Treats, which are great to use on cakes for parts you can’t make out of actual cake. I then covered the individual pieces with fondant and then put the roof together. (Sorry the photo is so blurry)

For the Police Box signs, I had my hubby help me. He took black fondant and used sprinkles to spell out the words.

For the note on the door I used white fondant, and wrote on it using a toothpick dipped in black gel icing color.

Then came the base for the cake. The cake was quite heavy, so I was concerned about using a base that would be sturdy enough. My husband works for a sign company, so he has access to acrylic sheets. He cut one big enough for me and brought it home. I cleaned it up, and then covered the top of it in white fondant. This will give me a canvas to “paint” on as well as a something to adhere the cake to. Next, get the fondant damp with water. Then I started randomly putting dots of food coloring down. The food color would spread due to the water on the fondant, it will look like watercolors spreading. Once I was done covering it with color, I sprinkled salt over it. This created star like dots. The overall look I was trying to replicate was this:

I unfortunately didn’t take any pictures of this process, but in the pictures below you can see a small portion of it sticking out from under the cake. I let the base dry over night. Then when I was ready to transport the cake to the party, I put some icing down on the base and then placed the cake on top of that.

The weather in California isn’t always the best for decorating cakes and having them keep shape. I don’t have A/C and we have been dealing with record breaking temperatures and humidity here. That alone made me nervous and then add to it the drive we needed to make with the cake. We made it to the party, the cake was still standing, but it took a little damage in the process. (Add potholes to the enemy list for cakes)

Here’s the cake after the drive to the party:

The cake took on a wibbly wobbly timey wimey shape. I wasn’t happy with the shape, but everyone at the party said it added to the Dr. Who-ness of the cake. I’ll take it!

In all I have to say the Tardis cake was a huge hit! I now know what improvements to make for the next one.

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Loads of Love,

April