Tracey Island - Macmillan Bake Off 2017

A couple of weeks ago we held our Macmillan Coffee Morning at work, which is an annual event here in the UK.  It ran along similar lines to last year and we had a competition for the Best Baker - I came second last year and I went all out to try and win this time and it worked ...  In my head, I knew what I wanted to recreate - I had a vision of Tracey Island from Thunderbirds ...  I spent three whole evenings and about 20 hours trying to achieve this, plus about a week of planning time when I had to think about exactly how I would recreate the various elements in the design ....

I made a lake from melted Glacier Mints ....  that itself took a whole evening - I really didn't have an idea of how long it would take to melt a few sweets in a Bain Marie.  The idea worked though!  I first saw this done in an episode of this year's Great British Bake Off where it was used to re-create the effect of glass.  I melted the mints onto baking parchment and peeled away the backing.  I had the idea of making the end result look even more like a lake by backing the whole melted area with rolled out white royal icing which I tinted on the surface with blue food colouring.

How could I make palm trees?  I used Matchmaker chocolates for the trunks as they are long and nobbly and tree like.  The palm fronds are of green rolled out icing which I cut with Christmas holly cutters.  If they are overlaid offset on each other and stuck on the end of the Matchmakers, then they just look like palm trees!

The island itself was made from 3 cakes that I baked separately and then cut to shape and stacked on to each other to make a base, house, various launchpads and rocky crevices.  It was done from chocolate and vanilla flavoured victoria sponge swirled together to create a marble effect inside and stuck together with vanilla buttercream filling.  I covered the whole with chocolate flavoured buttercream which was then decorated with flower and green bobble cake decorations to look like plants and grass.

White and grey royal icing was rolled out to make the house walls, windows and roof, along with a landing strip, cave entrance and launchpad turret.

I managed to find a set of 3 diecast Thunderbirds vehicles in exactly the right size which provided the finishing touches ....

I was up against a lot of competition with tastes and flavours but the approach to make an eye catching traditional cake was favourite and apparently, tasted as good as it looked!

How will I top this next year?  I think I may just have to stand down and let someone else have a go .....