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Monday, October 01, 2012

Move over, Dalek

We missed Doctor Who this weekend. We were too busy living it!

I'm rather alarmed to realise that it has been four whole years since my mother last received a Dalek birthday cake, but this year has surpassed all previous attempts. The idea is that, should the Daleks be considering yet another invasion of Earth, they will see us consuming their life-like effigies without mercy and get on the first bus back to Skaro. Also, my Mum really loves Daleks.

Behold the original Dalek Cake made by my sister back in 2007.

Dalek cake!
Dalek Cake, 2007 (A terrifying brown Dalek)
Behold the Extermicake I made back in 2008.  

Dalek Cake
Extermicake 2008 (Another terrifying
brown Dalek)
I couldn't remember it was so long ago. I thought nephew Alex would have remember the two Dalek cakes, and whilst they are undoubtedly etched into his nightmares, he was only two on the last encounter.

Mum's birthday isn't for another few weeks, but since my sister, Alex and baby Sophie were coming for the weekend, Stephen and I set about making a Dalek cake so we could celebrate the birthday while we were almost all together.

Behold, Extermicake 2012:

Extermicake 2012 (A truly horrifying, slightly lopsided, brown Dalek, with terrified on-lookers)
The Dalek leans in a plaintive fashion.
Stephen and I made a cake from a made-up recipe, a bit like this one, only without the baking powder, with added instant coffee and about half the sugar was Muscovado. For the icing, I recalled how a previous fudge-making expedition had gone disastrously wrong and never truly set, so I merely repeated the mistakes I made that time to produce a kind of fudgey plaster. The plunger (technical term in Dalekology) was produced by firing a cook's blow torch at the top of a marshmallow before stabbing a chocolate finger into it.

I can't tell you how to make it stand up straight or be Dalek-shaped because we achieved neither of these objectives.

Right, I hope you paid attention to all that or how are you going to make one yourself?

See the Flickr Dalek Cake Group for more Dalek cakes - some are even better than ours! Some, however, are worse.

Baby Sophie was awake much more than when I first met her. She's a very happy baby and has begun to smile a little. I will put some photos of her up on my Flickr stream once I have organised myself.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:19 PM

    Those Dalek cakes aren't leaning over due to a baking fault.

    They've been drinking too much strong moonshine. Erm, I meant Skaroshine!

    Cheers! :)

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  2. Awesome! Somebody recently hacked a street construction sign here to read "Caution: Daleks ahead" and I failed to turn left on the green light because I was trying to see Daleks...

    Third try at the CAPTCHA and counting.

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  3. Thank you both.

    Gary - For his sixtieth birthday, my Dad got many bottles of Scotch from colleagues, friends and family members (admittedly of highly varying cost and quality) and every time any cooking takes place, we'll claim to have "used up that Scotch we found laying about, to give it a bit of a kick", whether it's cake or curry. Added to this is the reputation of my Christmas Cake, which was described as "moist" after I fed about two pints of brandy into it (I only gave it a few spoonfuls a week, as you're supposed to, but I did make the cake about June), and yes, you weren't the first person to suspect drunkenness on the part of the Dalek.

    (Although, as you know, Skaro has two moons, so moonshine, or double-moonshine, would be just fine.)

    Katja - that's great. Nice to see you around. :-)

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  4. Anonymous12:23 PM

    This really is the best cake in the world; I'm so pleased that it exists.

    x

    Elodie

    ReplyDelete
  5. Even the who producers aren't brave enough to make a dalek cake - they settled for a tardis one for Matt Smith's 30th!!! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0109672

    ReplyDelete

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