Exterminate... exterminate...!

Aaah, yes. The Dalek cake. This was made for a friend's birthday last September - she is, as you may have guessed, a Doctor Who fan of tragic proportions. This cake is the current undisputed titleholder of "my most time-consuming cake ever" - it took fourteen hours to decorate. All the panels, knobs, switches, iris, "ears" and weird bath plunger thing (which I've never been able to see a use for, by the way. I do watch the new Doctor Who, and I must say I've never seen a Dalek try to unclog a toilet), were individually handmade from sugarpaste, then dusted with bronze shimmer dust (where appropriate). The only non-edible parts of this cake were the rod supporting the iris (wooden dowel), the rod supporting the bath plunger thing (slightly thinner wooden dowel), and the laser, which my darling husband manufactured for me in his shed using a soldering iron (and yes, it was cleaned thoroughly before insertion!).

If I did this again, it might not take quite as long, as there was some experimentation involved. But it was definitely a labour of love - I had such fun making this, it was so exciting and different! Anyway, I'm sure there are some bits of it that aren't absolutely perfect, but I was really happy with the end result. And so, I think, was "Astrid".