Bowling cake

It was my husband's birthday yesterday and we all went bowling then had a barbeque at home. I decided to theme his cake, and although he plays golf a lot more than he goes bowling, I didn't fancy making a green cake.

I made 2 square sponges and put them together on a big breadboard. I used my fail-safe sponge cake mix, but needed it to be 8 eggs and the rest of the quantities increased accordingly. I've never made so much cake mix in one go before! Oh, I nearly forgot, I added 1tbsp vanilla to the mix too.

Once the cakes were in place, I made up enough buttercream to cover them with a thin layer, then rolled out some ready made white icing and put it on top. I trimmed the icing to fit and kept the trimmings covered, I would need them later. I used my icing paste colours to make up a brown and watered it down so it wasn't too dark, then brushed it lengthways down the cake to make the wooden floorboard effect of a bowling alley.

With the spare icing, I fashioned 10 white bowling pins, then painted red rings on the necks and left them to dry. Each pin had a toothpick pushed up inside it with about 3cm sticking out at the bottom. When the cake was dry I added these at one end and made a ball out of black ready-coloured icing and made 3 holes in it with the end of my paintbrush. I placed the ball against the pins on the cake. I then used dark brown icing colour to paint the dark arrows on the cake.

Finally, I made 40 stars out of white icing and used a little water to stick them all around the edges of the cake, mainly to pretty it up as the icing was a bit wobbly where it met the board. I coloured a couple of them red too.

When we put the candles on, they each sat at the broad end of one of the arrows.