Cake baking and Dicing

So it was my boyfriend's birthday and I decided I needed to be incredibly overambitious in the cake I made him. Now we both love board games and as Catan has already been done I thought I would try another one of our favourites RoboRally. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/roborally

But I didn't just want my boardgame cake to be decorative and delicious, I wanted it to be playable!

My first step was to make the playing figures and squares to make up the board out of modelling icing. I hadn't made or used any before so it probably wasn't the best result.

The game also has some little cardboard squares of the robot's so I used icing to make those as well. Here they are with their counterparts.

Twonky:

Spin Bot:

Next I wanted to try and make something to represent the the bases you need to navigate the robots to. They are made of orange/yellow plastic so I decided that boiled sweets would be the best option. Again I had never made them before, so I did some research on the internet to work out how.

First I had to dissolve a large amount of sugar, in a pan with golden syrup and then add some food colouring and orange flavouring:

Now as I didn't have a sugar thermometer it was a bit of a challenge to work out when it was ready. I had to repeatedly test it my dropping small amounts into cold water and waiting for it to make brittle threads. I then had to pour it into a pan, and try not to horribly burn my hands whilst I moulded the hot mixture. Some of it was made into squares for my cake and the rest I just made into random shapes:

Then I left thing's for a day or so until I made the actual cake. Which was my standard chocolate. Then I cut it into a square and coated it with orange flavoured buttercream icing:

The square shaped hole was left on purpose to be a pit, one of the obstacles that robots can fall into.
Then came the final stage piping details onto the squares I made earlier

and assembling them to make the board:

Then I just had to drive the cake an hour and a half up the motorway to my boyfriends house and keep it hidden till his actual birthday the next day. Then I convinced him he wanted to play Robo Rally and said I would set the board up for him:

Then we actually got to play a game, moving our edible playing pieces around the cake. We did use the cards from the actual board game:



And fittingly enough it being his birthday he won, and then we finally got to eat the cake!