Thursday, 1 December 2011

Isle of Wight Cake: we love Steephill Cove!

For my Mum's birthday - Sue Mann, huge IOW fan - there was only one choice for her birthday cake...


As Mama is gluten intolerant, I made the cake with rice flour substituting for regular self-raising flour in my sponge recipe. I was a bit worried it would taste funny (the cake batter certainly did!) but when baked it was actually fine. I still would have preferred to use Dove Farm gluten free self-raising flour but sadly my local Tesco was out of stock when I went shopping for my ingredients so rice flour was my emergency back-up!

I baked a rectangular sponge and then, when cooled, shaped it into the IOW shape. I covered in green sugarpaste, then used white royal icing for the cliffs, green royal icing for the land surface, and blue for the sea. To create the swirled sea, I mixed a batch of darker blue royal icing and used a cocktail stick to swirl it into the lighter blue sea which produced a marbled effect. I made the coast with a sprinkling of golden caster sugar, but you can also use crumbled up cookies (make sure they are gf if you are making a cake for a coeliac!) which would look better - my sugar got a bit absorbed in the sea!

I then added The Needles and Steephill Cove Lighthouse (where we celebrated Mum's birthday!) and finally a Red Funnel ferry coming into East Cowes from Southampton. Generally a very easy cake to make, and Ma loved it! :)

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