Little House on the Cake Board

The weekend before last, a couple of friends of mine upped sticks and moved house – granted only about half a mile down the road, but moving was still a lot of work!
They were taking some old furniture off my hands, so I was backwards and forwards to their new house a fair bit. One quiet evening, knowing I was going back the next day, I decided to get my bake on…

I wanted to keep it relatively simple, no complete covering in fondant, lots of fiddly bits etc. The whole idea was based around a loaf tin – I made up a double quantity of victoria sponge, and split it 2/3 to 1/3. The larger portion went straight into the loaf tin, and quickly baked up as the bottom section of the house.

My ingenious idea for the roof was to tilt the loaf tin during cooking: by using the same tin it would be exactly the right size to fit the base, and by tilting it I would get a sloped triangle shape. After a quick root around in the cupboard, I found this foil container (I think it once contained a takeaway), which was a perfect size and shape to support the loaf tin on its side.
I added a spoonful of milk and some cocoa powder to the remaining 1/3 of the mix, a brown brick roof is just crying out for chocolate.

The tilted tin worked perfectly! The cake had risen ever so slightly in the middle – you can see it is a bit bumpy at the bottom here, but this quickly trimmed off with a bread knife.

The 2 pieces fitted together perfectly!

Next it was onto some buttercream to sandwich the two parts together, and also to top off the roof. I mixed up some straightforward chocolate buttercream, generously sandwiched the two cakes together, and used the rest on the roof. I’d planned to let the roof set a bit before adding tile patterns, but found that making lines with the serrated side of an ordinary kitchen knife smoothed it and made a great effect at the same time.

Some finishing touches came in the form of windows and doors. I coloured up some fondant, then painted details on using a fine paintbrush and some black food colouring, before leaving them out overnight to dry and harden.

In the morning they were very quickly stuck on with a little normal white icing, and the cake was ready all set – super simple!

The front door was of course personalised with the right number – I love the way the black has smudged slightly on this window so it looks like it’s old and cracking – hope this is not a sign of things to come for them!