Diamond Jubilee Diorama Cake...

My friend Emma called me on the wednesday before the Diamond Jubilee.  If she was to bake a cake, could I possibly make it into a Corgi?  Hmmmm.  I looked around at some Corgi cakes online and came to the conclusion that it would be a little bit ambitious, and I would probably end up making something completely unappetizing (slice of small, possessed-looking dog, anyone?)

But Corgis are cute, and very much a symbol of the Queen.  So I had a think, and sketched some ideas.  It was then that I came up with this "diorama" cake design, and I got very excited.

With the "Street Party" bunting cupcakes from my previous post.

The last cake I made was for my son and featured some dinosaurs that I painted onto cut-out pieces of gumpaste (you can see the cake here).  I really enjoyed making those dinosaurs and found the painting-on-hard-icing technique not too difficult. 

So I picked some symbols, found some pictures online to work from, and set about making and painting the different pieces.

 The corgis are from this cross stitch pattern which I had just stitched for a friend 

after seeing it featured in Mollie Makes magazine.

I used Mexican paste for the flag, crest and corgis as it dries super hard.  I made the Mexican paste myself (so easy!!) using this recipe.  I rolled it out to about 4mm thick, placed the pictures on it and cut around with a sharp knife. 

To mark out the details of each picture I laid the pic on top of the paste and poked through lightly with a clean pin.

I then filled in the colours using Wilton colour paste mixed with vodka and a very fine paint brush.  When the paint was dry, I went round the outlines with an edible black pen.  

I secured toothpicks to the back of the corgis and crest by using a small piece of mexican paste laid over the toothpick and stuck down with a little cool, boiled water.  For the Union Jack I used kebab skewers as it needed to stand higher than the other figures.

Then to assemble I crumb coated the cake, iced it with buttercream and then with white fondant.  I then drew the bunting flags on with edible black pen and filled them in with food colouring "paint".

And here is a rare pic of me cutting the cake in my red and blue finery.  Usually I prefer to be behind the camera!

Did you celebrate the Diamond Jubliee?  I'd love to hear about it!