Ok, so I know that some of you won’t recognise the title, which was the theme tune for an old British sit com ‘Dad’s Army’
The premise of the show was based on a group of volunteers for what was known as ‘The Home Guard’ during the 2nd World War.
Here’s what google says about it:
“In World War II, with a German invasion looming, the defence of Walmington-on-Sea rests in the hands of the local bank manager and a motley collection of volunteers in the Home Guard unit. Despite being woefully ill-equipped, the rag-tag crew is ready to take on invading troops from across the Channel.”
Here’s a clip from the original show and a picture of the original cast
I remember watching it in the 1970’s and it was a firm family favourite, despite the subject matter. Perhaps because it was so long after the war had ended, but I’m sure it was still a bit of a risk by the creators of the show. There has recently been a remake of some lost episodes, and there is a stage play.
Anyway, that was a very long way of telling you how I ended up making a cake!
One of my friends recently played the main character ‘Captain Mainwaring’ in the play, and asked me to make a small cake for the Director to celebrate their final performance. For once, YouTube failed me! Not a Dad’s Army cake tutorial in sight 😕 A quick look on google images was much better for inspiration though. There were lots of suggestions for large cakes, but looking through the images (non cake related) I saw exactly what I needed 💡
I took the helmet as my inspiration, and set to work 😊 I started by baking a vanilla cake (see recipe page) in a 6” hemisphere pan. Once it was baked and cooled, I gave it a crumbcoat of vanilla buttercream. After chilling it in the fridge for half an hour, I rolled out some sugarpaste that I had coloured with Wilton gel colour ‘Leaf green’ and a bit of black to dull down the green a bit, and covered the cake. The Wilton colours were part of this set. I used some shelf liner (thoroughly washed and dried!) to create a mesh like texture on the sugarpaste. The remaining sugarpaste I added tylose powder to, then rolled out a strip to form the brim of the helmet and textured that too! Tylose powder turns sugarpaste into gumpaste which dries harder, which was perfect for the brim. I also used it to make the foliage, and left it to dry over a foam flower former so that they would dry with a little shape instead of flat.
The Dad’s Army script is full of what have become iconic phrases, so the finishing touch was adding the little flags, with some of the most recognisable ones written on. And this was the final result guys!
My friend also asked for 36 cupcakes for the cast. I don’t have a picture of them, but I mixed up some buttercream in camouflage colours, and put stripes of each colour in the piping bag. I then used the Wilton 1M tip to create a swirl on top. As this request was a bit short notice, I found some edible cupcake toppers on eBay, that my friend added to them after he collected everything. He also gave me a donation to my Macmillan total whilst he was here. Thank you so much Darren Brierley 😍
The feedback from Darren was that the last night of the play went brilliantly and everyone enjoyed the cakes 😀
Well my lovelies, that’s all from me for now
Until next time
Stay safe and healthy
Debbie ❤️
Baking for Therapy 