Cake or death?

Well, it may have been a bit late, but I (Martha) finally managed to get my shit together and bake the Julia Gillard inspired cake. Naturally, just when I thought I was done, it was pointed out to me that by doing _only_ Julia I may appear partisan - so I will also bring you a Tony Abbott cake in the near future.

(Betty, no need for you to as well - unless you want to!).

After asking my colleagues for a recommendation for a design or element which best represents our PM, the shortlisted was whittled down to two: one, which I won't bore anyone else with (unless you're a Cake Wrecks fan, in which case... congraudation it a gril!) and the second, a front page from the Illawarra Mercury:

So, I went with the second option, against my better judgement.

Naturally, the cake _had_ to be carrot (carrot top, Anne of Green gables, anyone?) and because it was such a big fuck off mixture, involving 5 eggs and 4 cups of flour, I went with the easy frosting option of Betty Crocker Creamy Deluxe frosting (vanilla). Can i just say - yum. And also, gross. It tastes yum at first... but I'll get to that later.

After baking the cake for a good 1.5 hours (like i said, it was HUGE), i took it out of the oven to cool down while I coloured the frosting and cut out the licorice to form the outlines above.

Then, being way past my bedtime at 9pm, I had to hit the hay and let the cake cool properly.

7am the following morning and it was time to actually decorate this little bitch. Red icing? spreads like a dream. White fondant? Rolled out easily and using the skills I learned from Puss in Boots, I cut out a reasonable likeness of the outline in the picture. The hardest bit was the licorice - every time i do this, i swear i will pipe with chocolate instead and i think i should have! Still close enough.

I do have a question though... no matter how "friendly" my pictorial inspirations are, I only end up with angry faces. What am I doing wrong???

The finished product:

I had set aside some time for afternoon tea to devour this cake experiment - but everybody decided it just couldn't and we dug in around 10.30.

Redheads after our attack:

(Sorry, don't know why I can't rotate). You can see we tried hard to retain the integrity of both her hairstyle and her facial structure.

The verdict? Despite being massive and therefore massively heavy to mix, the cake itself was a great recipe. I give it 8 out of 10. The decorating? Not too hard and not as hard as i thought, I'd say a difficulty rating of about 8. The taste? Cake good, frosting was deadly. in a bad way...

Overall I'd say the cake was an 8.

The major downside? There's something in that pre-made frosting that is lethal. I ended up sweating, shaking, with heart palpitations and a small blackout, and had a little break on the bathroom floor.

All better by afternoon tea though :)

Over to you, Betty!
xxMartha

PS a sneak preview of the TA cake to come: