Arriving on a jet plane

Today marked the momentous occasion of The Big Boss's return. Not that there was much to return to - no election results and no government. However, there was new carpet and there was a cake, which always makes things better!

I asked the gang at work what cake we should use as inspiration for LVV's return and we decided on the "jet plane" (I say "jet plane" because it looks more like a cartoon than an actual plane!). The jet plane is in the chapter titled "For boys" (I couldn't tell you why, except that possibly in 1983, at least in Women's Weekly land, girls still did the sewing and cooking while boys kicked it James Bond style).

Anyway, back to the point. The prototype:

And the result, made using the basic buttercake recipe, vanilla flavoured, with plain blue Vienna frosting. You'll see I had to improvise with some of the lollies for decoration, having eaten all the bullets and chocolate peanuts previously. I found halved jelly beans and trimmed musk sticks worked just as well!

I did have two issues though:
1) I used what was obviously too big a loaf tin, as the cake was not as risen as it looked in the picture and was consequently harder to shape into a round
2) My Vienna frosting split. I don't know why, except perhaps I used too much colouring and ran out of butter, so had to use margarine.A lesson for next time, I guess.

Here is the final product! The photo isn't very good but by this point I was rushing to finish.
xx Martha