Fire engine themed cake

Ingredients for 1 servings:

• 500 g flour
• 250 g sugar
• 250 g margarine
• 4 eggs
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 packet of vanilla sugar
• 1 packet of baking powder
• ½ cup milk
• 4 tbsp cocoa powder
• 400 g marzipan
• 1 pack of food coloring, red
• 4 small biscuits, round for the wheels
• some sweets (Smarties)
• e.g. biscuit(s), for a biscuit ladder, possibly ice cream rolls or Mikado sticks

Instructions

Working time approx. 2 hours; Cooking/baking time approx. 50 minutes; Total time approx. 2 hours 50 minutes

e.g. for children’s birthdays

To make the marble cake, beat the margarine until fluffy. Then stir in the sugar, eggs, salt, milk, vanilla sugar, sifted flour, and baking powder. Divide the batter in half, and color one half dark with cocoa powder. Place each half, one after the other, into a large loaf pan and mix gently with a fork to create a marbled texture. Bake at 160°C for about 40-50 minutes. Simply test with a skewer whether the batter is cooked through. Let the cake cool slightly and then turn it out of the pan. Now cut off about 2/3 of the top cake, leaving 1/3 of the cake as the driver’s cab for the car. If the cake isn’t that tall, you can cut the cut piece to fit the driver’s cab and place it there. This works best when the cake is still a little warm and the pieces can cool on top of each other. After the cake has cooled, the marzipan is colored with food coloring and rolled out between two sheets of cling film to a thickness of about 2-3 mm. It shouldn’t be possible to see through it, as holes will easily form. Also, make sure that the rolled-out marzipan is roughly the same shape as the cake, so you won’t have to do as much repairing afterwards. Spread the marzipan over the cake and press it down firmly. For my cake, I applied the marzipan in two steps: first the driver’s cabin and then the rear part of the car. The transition can be easily smoothed. This works best if you moisten your hands slightly beforehand, as the marzipan is very sticky. This way, you can repair any holes and make them invisible by spreading them. Finish the car with cookies, Smarties, and a ladder made from cookie dough. For the ladder, I used cookie dough and covered it in chocolate for stability. You could also use chocolate Mikado sticks or ice cream cones. The sky’s the limit when it comes to creativity.