So.....put together this.....

bowl of buttercream, plus these.....

packs of sugarpaste, and these....

homemade madeira cakes, with the addition of....

some yummy chocolate creations....

and you get an 80th birthday cake for my Dad!

Dad turned 80 on 6th August, and the previous weekend we had a family celebration in Aldeburgh....

and here's the birthday boy himself :-)

It's been a long time since I've made any celebration cakes, and quite honestly I'd forgotten how exhausing I tend to find it.  Plus, of course, I'm never satisfied with how the end product looks, although it always seems to taste good thank goodness!  In case you are wondering, the idea was to make something that resembled a tatty, dirty, old toolbox with the bottom drawer open ~ does it look like that to you???  I hope so!

I used the madeira cake recipe from Lindy's Cakes Ltd and it was delicious ~ I shall definitely make it again.  It was rich, moist and firm enough to use as the base for a celebration cake.  I made two 12" cakes (cutting one in half) which was quite a lot of hard work ~ thank goodness for electric hand mixers!  The buttercream for the crumbcoat was simply flavoured with lemon juice and peel to cut through some of the sweetness, and I made it fairly stiff.  As you can see, I purchased the sugarpaste and modelling paste ~ way too much hassle for me to make my own!

The chocolate tools were absolutely fantastic!  I got them from a seller on Yumbles, Schokolat, and I kid you not, the nuts and bolts actually unscrew!  Granted, it wasn't exactly cheap to fill up that toolbox drawer but the effect was well worth it I think.

Everyone said the cake looked good ~ perhaps they were just being kind LOL  Now I can take a break from the trauma of celebration cake making until August 2018, when my Mum turns 80!