Beach Hut Birthday Cake

I made this cake for my little sisters Birthday, and it was served at her beach party. It blended in well down at Hengistbury Head and has a very nice kitch look to it, with the lovely pastel colours.

It is hard how to tell you to do the icing and decorations, and i often find it easier just to look at a picture and copy it, but i will give you some tips at the end. 

Ingredients

For the Cake:

300g sugar 
300g butter 
6 eggs 
1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla (or another flavour like lemon zest)
300g self raising flour 

For the Filling:

280g of softened butter 
560g of icing sugar 
couple of tablespoons of milk 
vanilla 
jam of your choice

For the Decoration: 

any jam of your choice or butter cream
a couple of 1kg fondant icing packets 
food colouring: 
blue 
yellow 
pink 
red 
(but by any means change the colours to suit your taste) 

Method: 

1. Pre-heat oven to 180c
 Cream together butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. 

2. Break in the eggs one by one, mixing after each addition (you may want to add a tablespoon of flour at this point to avoid it curdling) 

3. Add in the vanilla, and then sieve in half the flour, folding gently until all incorporated. Add the remaining flour, and mix until all incorporated. 

4. Decanter the mixture into a large greased and lined square tin, and another smaller greased and lined square tin, smooth the tops, and pop into the oven to bake for about 30-40 mins, or until a skewer comes out clean. 

5. Whilst the cakes are cooling, whip together all the ingredients for the butter cream apart from the jam. 
when the cake is cool, cut them in half and fill with butter cream and jam. Shape the smaller of the cakes into a triangle, fit onto the top of the larger one and then cover with the jam of your choice or butter cream.

tips for icing: 

• i would recommend colouring a large amount of icing for your base colour straight away, even if it seems too much, as this means that you wont run the risk of running out and having mis-matched shades of blue. 
• use the back of a knife to make the 'plank' lines on the beach hut 
• paint the red lines on the circle of the life ring 

All of the other elements are pretty self explanatory, but comment if you have any problems!