Summer festival glamping cake

We had a local afternoon tea with baking competition at the weekend. For the taste category Master JibberJabber decided he wanted to make his favourite cake which is Victoria sponge cake. The other category was decorated cakes with a 'Summer' theme so Miss JibberJabber decided to go for Fiona Cairns' wigwam cake from her book Celebration Cakes.

The recipe in the book is for a spiced apple cake. Since it is not apple season yet and also because he cakes were solely being judged on decoration we decided to bake a simple lemon Madeira cake. The benefit of this is that it provides a great base for decoration and it gave Miss JibberJabber more time for decorating the cake. My tip for this cake is that usually I make a dent in the cake mixture when it is put in the tin as the middle tends to rise up. On this occasion the dent was left out so the case rose in the middle which gave the perfect shape for the tent. For an extra taste of summer an elderflower flavoured buttercream was used.

Equipment: 6in (15cm) round loose based cake tin lined, lined, large bowls, electric whisk/beaters, wire rack, cake board, rolling pin.

Ingredients

4oz (115g) Unsalted butter softened or baking spread

4oz (115g) Caster sugar

2 Eggs

4oz (115g) Self raising flour

2oz (55g) Plain flour

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Buttercream

3½ oz (100g) Unsalted butter softened

5oz (150g) Icing sugar

1-2 tbsp (15-30ml) Elderflower cordial

Decoration

9oz (250g) Chocolate flavoured icing

2lb 3oz (1kg) White fondant icing

9oz (250g) Red fondant icing

Mikado biscuits

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170°C/Gas mark 3.

2. In a large bowl cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy.

3. Beat in the eggs one by one.

4. Fold in the flours with the lemon zest and juice.

5. Transfer to the prepared tin and level out the top

6. Bake for around 45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

7. Remove from the tin and leave to cool completely on a wire rack.

8. Once the cake has cooled cut in half.

9. To make the buttercream beat the butter until it is very soft. Add the icing sugar gradually until it is all mixed in. Beat in the elderflower cordial adding as much as you need to get the right taste and consistency.

10. Put the cake on the cake board.

11. Spread the bottom half of the cake with some of the filling. Put the top half on the cake.

12. Spread a layer of the buttercream over the cake and build up to a cone shape. Leave some buttercream for sticking later.

13. Make the door by rolling out a piece of the chocolate flavoured icing and cutting a triangle shape.

14. Rolling out the white icing and cut out 18 small circles. Put to one side.

15. Use the rest of the icing to cover the tent and shape it into a funnel at the top.

16. Roll out strips of the red icing to put around the bottom and the top of the tent.

17. Put the white circles around the bottom red strip using some of the buttercream if needed.

18. Make the stitching by rolling out small pieces of the chocolate flavoured icing and putting two together to form a stitch. Stick to the tent.

19. Finish off by putting four Mikado biscuits through the top of the tent.

20. As an added extra with the leftovers you could shape some figures.