The zombies are coming...

Ladies and gents, I have a confession to make. For the past few weeks I have been living a lie: having furtive sessions of secret activities, leaving the office early for each rendez-vous, making up pathetic lies to cover my tracks. To be honest, it's a relief that the whole charade is over.

And what have I got to show for it?

The most head-bending sugarpaste bonanza you could possibly wish to encounter outside of the context of 'Ace of Cakes'! Let me proudly present a birthday cake tribute to the epic computer game 'Plants versus Zombies'.

In case you're not familiar with the game, here's what the garden is supposed to look like:

Massive thanks go to the lovely M for assisting with this - it was well and truly a joint effort. Without her innate sense of German engineering, it's doubtful that the figures would have come out as structurally sound as they did. And without the use of her facilities there's no way my lies would have gone undetected for so long.

All that remains to say is: Happy Birthday Husband... The Zombies are Coming!

Totally tropical celebration cake

Makes one 9" x 12" cake, about 4.5" deep

Ingredients:
740g caster sugar
740g Stork/ baking margarine
740g self raising flour, sifted
370g plain flour, sifted
13 eggs, beaten
zest of 6 limes

Frosting:
250g unsalted butter, softened
120g icing sugar, sifted
125g creamed coconut
tablespoon rum

For finishing:
Half a jar of apricot jam
About 500g sugarpaste icing

Method:

1. Grease and line your tine - best to triple line it if you can, and to wrap the outside in four or five layers of newspaper to stop the outsides cooking too fast and burning. Preheat the oven to about 155 degrees celcius

2. Cream together Stork and sugar. Very slowly mix in the beaten egg. If you do it too quickly and it starts to curdle, add in just as much of the flour as you need to stop it curdling.

3. Stir in all the rest of the flour.

4. Put the mixture in your tin, scooping out the middle to leave a hole (this will get filled in as the cake cooks).

5. Bake for about 1h45mins to 2hrs, until a skewer comes out clean. Cool on a cooling rack.

6. When the cake is completely cooled, cut off any excess necessary so that the top is pretty much even and flat. Then turn the cake upside down so that the perfectly flat side becomes the top, and the cut bit becomes the bottom. Cut the cake into two equal halves, horizontally.

7. Make up the buttercream, by whisking together all of the ingredients.

8. Spread about a third of your jam over the top of the bottom half of your cake, and spread the coconut buttercream on the bottom of the top half of your cake. Sandwich together.

9. Cover the outside of your cake with a thin layer of apricot jam to help the sugarpaste icing to stick to the cake.

10. Roll out your sugarpaste icing and use it to cover the cake, smoothing and trimming as you go. Decorate according to your own imagination!