My Big, Fat Cake Project

The inspiration for this year's big cake project was Red House, designed by Phillip Webb for my personal hero, William Morris. J and L and I worked for three days to make our Ginger Red House (heh heh). The original is pictured below (I borrowed this picture from the Victorian Web). The house is now in the care of the National Trust and is an icon of the Arts and Crafts movement.




J and L made an amazing prototype of Red House out of card, so that we would have the individual pieces to make out of gingerbread.




They even sourced the floor plans. We built the house on a piece of acetate, that sat on the plans. The acetate was the only piece of the whole cake that was not edible.




The walls took one whole day.




And here is the finished cake. It sits on a three-layer chocolate-cherry cake. In front of the house sits its well and the Morris family (just one baby at this stage) sitting on a Willow pattern inspired carpet. The grass is made of food-coloured shredded coconut.




This overhead shot shows all the pieces of the roof... which itself took one whole day. Very fussy!




A few more photos.






Making the little fondant figures were fun, as it was - for a change - a small, not-too-messy job. That's the end of my pinky finger to show some scale.




A view of the front entrance.




The side...




The cake was 5" tall and 17" x 17". I was worried about making it too soft to hold up the gingerbread house, and I made it a little dry by mistake.




The cake at the event.




The gingerbread was both tasty and strong. I used my favourite recipe, found here. We used 38 eggs for the entire thing.

Thank you J and L for being such great collaborators! We worked for three days and it was smooth sailing all the way through.

And thank you William Morris, for the constant inspiration!